Salad in Surprise

5 restaurants in Surprise list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Ray's Pizza at $4.25, listed as Caesar Salad. The typical price across town is $8.99, and the dearest we found is $16.99 at Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers, so the two ends of the list are $12.74 apart, which is 300% more for the same dish. Of the 5 kitchens listed, 2 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 2 sit within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 1106 other areas and compare them all on salad across United States. The typical price there runs $9.50 at the median, so Surprise is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 653 of the 1106. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Kennedy Pizza & Fried Chicken in Newark, NJ, and the highest best price is $13.95 in Mount Sinai, NY. The nearest area with it is Peoria, about 9 mi away, where the best price is $6.99.

Where is the cheapest salad in Surprise? Ray's Pizza, at $4.25 on 14545 Grand Ave. The same dish reaches $16.99 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $12.74.

What should salad cost here? About $8.99 is the typical price across the 5 kitchens in Surprise that list it. Of the ones listed above, 2 are more than a dollar below that and 1 is more than a dollar above, so the typical price is a middle rather than a floor.

Is it cheaper nearby? The nearest area we track it in is Peoria, about 9 mi away, where the best price is $6.99. That is $2.74 more than the best price here.

Why do the prices differ so much? We compare what each menu calls the same dish, and menus are not identical: portion, cut, sides and the kind of room you are sitting in all ride on the price, and none of that shows up in a number. Part portions and half sizes are kept out of this comparison, and a chain charging the same at several addresses is counted once, so the spread above is between genuinely different kitchens rather than the same one repeated.