Musings on a chip shop menu

Berwick Street hosts a very very nice fish & chip shop.  When I was there last week, I noticed some discrepancies in food item pricing on the menu.

Lines items one and two:

  • Chips, 1 egg – £3.20
  • Chips, 2 eggs – £3.80

So from this we can deduce that an egg costs 60 pence and that the base cost of chips is £2.60. Next:

  • Chips, 1 egg, 1 sausage – £4.30
  • Chips, 2 eggs, 1 sausage – £4.90
  • Chips, 2 eggs, 2 sausages – £5.70

The first item tells us that a sausage costs £1.10. This is confirmed by adding 60 pence to get the £4.90 for the extra egg, but suddenly we’re getting a discount on the second sausage, costing just another 80 pence.

  • Chips, 1 sausage – £3.70
  • Chips, 2 sausages – £5.30

This starts well, our baseline of £2.60 for the chips and £1.10 for the sausage gives us the £3.70 we’re expecting.  But hold on a minute, the second sausage here is costing a whopping £1.60, twice the previous price for sausages!

  • Chips, 1 saveloy – £3.70
  • Chips, 2 saveloys – £5.30

Our first saveloy is costing the same as a regular sausage, and the second saveloy is twice as expensive as the first. In any case, surely the saveloy is a superior sausage and should cost more?

I don’t know why we second-sausage lovers are being charged such an exorbitant premium, can the injustices of this world never end?

One thought on “Musings on a chip shop menu”

Leave a Reply to El Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *