Even New York Pizza Isn’t Safe From Inflation
New York and pizza are as synonymous as baseball and hot dogs, so seeing how much the price of a slice has gone up over the years is pretty disappointing.
A New York City-based freelance journalist and pizza enthusiast named Liam Quigley spent eight years from 2014 to 2022 tracking the price of every slice of pizza he ordered, including slices with toppings on it. In total, he spent $1,244.22 on 464 slices of pizza over that time, and found that the average price for a slice of regular pizza jumped from $2.52 in 2014 to $3.00 in 2022.
However, the price of a slice actually remained fairly consistent for the first six years of the study. Then with the dawn of the Covid-19 era and the subsequent inflation issues that it caused, a regular slice in New York City jumped from $2.51 in 2020 to $2.96 in 2021.
A slice of pepperoni, the golden standard for what a New York slice should be, faired even worse. A pepperoni slice started at $3.33 in 2014, rose to $3.64 in 2019, and then sharply rose to $4.58 in 2022, making it almost a full dollar more expensive from 2019 to 2022.
It's sad to see that even pizza is becoming less affordable these days. There's nothing better than zooming through the city in a rush to get somewhere and popping off at a random pizza spot for a quick cheap lunch. Well after eight years the pizza may still be quick but it's not as cheap as it used to be. Sure, this is the literal definition of nickel and diming since the price for a slice has only risen a dollar, but if you eat as much pizza as I used to those dollars start to add up really fast.