Monday, August 4, 2008

Buyer's Regret - $3.47 frozen pizza

Ever worship the cheap.  Ever buy a mediocre product just because the price was ridiculously low.  Today, it all started when I found myself, with mother in tow, in the relatively new Walmart Supercentre(?) near South Common, looking for buttons to replace a missing one on a pair of jeans.  (Please give me some credit for buying buttons, instead of simply tossing out the $10 jeans).   After I grabbed the buttons, I felt the strong "invisible hand" pulling me to check out the deals in this gargantuan one-stop-shop.  Strolling through the frozen aisles, I found an amazing bargain for 12', deluxe, frozen pizzas by some American brand that I've never heard of.   $3.47!  How is that possible?  There's so many contributing factors for the unbeatable price.   The simplest explanation is that Walmart can subsidize the losses on the pizza with the overall profit that the store makes in other areas.  

We consumers only care about the price but not the true cost of our purchases.  Going back to the $3.47 for my pizza.  The components of the pizza came from all over the country.  For example, the cardboard packaging originated from trees that were logged, then sent to a pulpmill, then a papermill, and then to the pizza plant.  The flour, meat, cheese, and vegetables also are likely to have come from different regions of the continent.  What were the resource extraction, farming, manufacturing, and transportation costs that went into the pizza? What would be the true cost of that pizza if we not only considered those costs but were also incorporate the cost of giving every employee who had a part in making it a fair wage and humane working conditions.  Okay, maybe I'm a bit too pessimistic in thinking that the workers in the pizza plant are all illegal aliens; but I really don't think it's such a stretch.    

In the end, I ate the stupid pizza and it wasn't good.  Mom said it was salty, and I thought the crust was too doughy, the sauce too pasty and the toppings too sparse.  I guess I got what I paid for.    

           

   

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The best way to live modestly is to buy the most expensive versions of the cheapest products. Buy $5 artisan flax loaf instead of the $2 plain white. Making your sandwich taste twice as good is worthy of the 30 cent investment. That cheap bread will only leave you craving food alternatives that are more expensive than sandwiches.

Anonymous said...

Shame on you! No such thing as bad pizza!!! haha.