Salad in Thunder Bay

8 restaurants in Thunder Bay list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Kelseys Original Roadhouse at $4.98, listed as Caesar Salad. The typical price across town is $9.00, and the dearest we found is $14.49 at Montana’s BBQ & Bar, so the two ends of the list are $9.51 apart, which is 191% more for the same dish. Of the 8 kitchens listed, 4 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 2 sit within a dollar of it and 2 charge more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 49 other areas and compare them all on salad across Canada. The typical price there runs $12.50 at the median, so Thunder Bay is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 39 of the 49. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Billie Jax Grill & Bar in Whitby, ON, and the highest best price is $8.99 in Chilliwack, BC. The nearest area with it is Sault Ste. Marie, about 424 km away, where the best price is $4.99.

Where is the cheapest salad in Thunder Bay? Kelseys Original Roadhouse, at $4.98 on 805 Memorial Ave. The same dish reaches $14.49 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $9.51.

What should salad cost here? About $9.00 is the typical price across the 8 kitchens in Thunder Bay that list it. Of the ones listed above, 4 are more than a dollar below that and 2 are 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 Sault Ste. Marie, about 424 km away, where the best price is $4.99. That is $0.01 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.