Saturday, August 11, 2007

Whatever happened to economies of scale?

Very disappointing outcome to softball this weekend. The team, sans-Joe, went 1-1 on Friday night winning the first game and losing the second. We didn't have all of our regulars there, but ran away with the first game only to be run over in the second. That meant today we would play only one game. If we lost, that would be it and if we won, we'd play through the losers bracket on Sunday playing possibly 6 games. Unfortunately, we didn't even GET to Sunday. We lost 8-7 today. The game went back and forth as the score would indicate, but with last at bats, we didn't even get a hit in the last two innings. Ugh. After not having played in two weeks, I went 2-4 with 2 runs scored and played decently on defense at shortstop. I'm the fourth option at shortstop, so that tells you about our team today. Two of the first three options were there, but we needed them in the outfield. Our defense didn't really hurt us though, it was mostly our hitting or lack thereof.

So I came home from Joliet disappointed about our performance. I was going to head down the street to a friend's house with whom I haven't spent much time recently, but his daughter had a fever and then suffered seizures of some sort. She's susceptible to them apparently but is ok now. Instead of going over there I decided to order a pizza and watch the Bears preseason game.

As I ordered my pizza, from Pequod's one of my favorite thin crust pizzas in Chicago, something didn't seem right about the menu. Here's what I saw:



Small Medium Large


10" 12" 16"
Cheese only 6.95 9.25 13.25
Extra ingredient 1.35 1.75 2.4


Normally I order the large and then have extras for several days. Sounds pretty normal right? But I looked at the information above and instinctively ordered a medium instead (with pepperoni). Why? Well, it's $4 for an extra four inches (of pizza you sickos) which is $1 an inch. That would translate to $12 for the medium at that rate right? So screw that. If you do the math for a one ingredient pizza, the SMALL is actually the best deal at $.83 per inch, followed by the medium at $.917 and the large is the worst deal at $.98 per inch. Well what the hell?!?! How long have other pizza places been screwing me? And where's the economies of scale that we've come to expect? Don't we have an unwritten rule with businesses where they sell us a lot more than we need for a little more money? That's what Costco and Walmart are all about!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pequod's *thin* crust? I didn't even know they had it -- the deep dish is so good!

Also, your math is messed up. You shouldn't be computing on the basis of diameter, but rather *area*. Remember pi*R^2 ?

The small is 78.5 sq. in. -- or 8.9 cents/sq. in.

The medium is 113.1 sq. in. -- or 8.2 cents/sq. in.

The large is 201.1 sq. in. -- or 6.6 cents/sq. in.

So as the size increases, the marginal rate decreases. I'm not counting the toppings; I'll let you do that yourself.

Sorry for the crappy softball weekend. I hope I'm not now going to read about how even Kyle Orton is better than Rex Grossman. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Actually, that's not technically accurate either, because a pizza is three-dimensional, not two. You'd have to multiply the area by the thickness of the pizza to get a measurement in cubic inches.

Of course, we don't know the thickness of the pizza and only assume that the small, medium, and large are all the same thickness, but I don't believe it will matter much in the end -- the large should still be a better bargain.

Lakeview Coffee Joe said...

Ahhhh, there we go. Guess I'm not smarter than a 5th grader.

Oh, you still may read about Orton and Griese having much, much better fundamentals than Grossman. Rex made the exact same throw as he did in the super bowl, only then it was returned for a touchdown. Last night it just fell incomplete. He's learned nothing and still refuses to step and throw.

alexis said...

I wanna see the black-scholes model valuation of these pizzas, then I'll be convinced.

stef said...

Urm yes. What you guys said. So I will be ordering the large then. Right?