Chicken Wing Pricing Redux

(Photo: Southern Foodways Alliance)

About a year ago, I blogged about how odd the pattern of chicken wing prices was at my local Harold’s Chicken Shack.  Here was what they were charging for their wings:

2-wing meal $3.03

3-wing meal $4.50

4-wing meal $5.40

5-wing meal $5.95

6-wing meal $7.00

It is quite odd because they gave you a big discount on the fourth and fifth wings, but charged you a lot for the sixth wing.  There were many incongruities throughout the menu.

Since that time, Harold’s has invested in a fancy new menu up on the wall above the bulletproof glass that protects the workers from the customers.  I’ve also invested in a fancy new phone that actually takes pictures, unlike the phone I carried a year ago.  So this time, instead of having to write down all the prices, I just snapped a photo.

Did Harold’s fix their pricing?  Look for yourself.  They did indeed change prices, but not quite the way I would have expected.  It appears that they took all their old prices and multiplied then by 0.996, and those are the new prices.   So the prices fell by between one and three cents.

My favorite part of the new menu is the line that is blacked out.  There used to be an offering between six and 21 wings, but they crossed it out so you can’t see it any more.  I would love to know, given the rest of the pricing, what could have been so bad about the one they deleted.  Maybe they multiplied that one by 0.995 instead of 0.996, throwing it out of whack with the rest of the menu items.