Larger Pizzas Save You More Money

I decided to test this experiment on Dominos, attempting to do a carry-out on three different sizes of pepperoni pizzas. Dominos has a custom pizza builder you can use for this. According to their site, they carry 4 different sizes of pizzas:

Firstly, I loaded up the custom pizza builder, then added all 4 sizes into my cart to see the prices. Additionally, I used only cheese pizza to keep everything consistent. Unfortunately the extra large pizza only had one choice for the crust which was Brooklyn. I’m not sure if this affects the price but it was the only option. Once everything was loaded into the cart, I proceeded to check-out. As a result, these were the prices that came up:

• Small (10″): $9.49
• Medium (12″): $11.49
• Large (14″): $13.49
• Extra Large (“16”): 15.49

Calculating the Size of Each Pizza

After this, we use some simple elementary school math to find the areas for each pizza:

• Small (10″): Area = πr² = π5²= 78.5 in²
• Medium (12″): Area = πr² = π6² = 113.04 in²
• Large (14″): Area = πr² = π7² = 153.86 in²
• Extra Large (16″): Area = πr² = π8² = 200.96 in²

Calculating the Cost per Pizza

To find price per square inch, take the cost and divide it by the area.

• Small: Cost per inch = $9.49 / 78.5 = $0.12 per in²
• Medium: Cost per inch = $11.49 / 113.04 = $0.10 per in²
• Large: Cost per inch = $13.49 / 153.86 = $0.09 per in²
• Extra Large: Cost per inch = $15.49 / 200.96 = $0.07 per in²

Based on the results above, we can conclude that the Extra Large pizza saves you the most money. With the Extra Large, save about 0.02 per square inch compared to the Large. You save $0.03 compared to the medium and $0.05 compared to the small. However, this assumes you even want to eat a gigantic pizza in the first place.

Other things to consider may be that one large piece could fill you up as opposed to trying to stuff your hunger (and possibly overeat) with a medium. It’s also something you could bring to work for lunch as a leftover. It’s easier to bring once or two large slices in a piece of aluminum foil rather than 4-5 medium slices.

However, this study has only covered Domino’s Pizza. I have not analyzed the size and costs of other popular pizza places. Has anyone else done this yet?