WOULD YOU LIKE A LARGE FOR A QUARTER MORE?
Colorado Springs Gazette, 12-27-07
As we look
back on 2007, I know you’re asking the same question I am: Would I like to make that a large for a
quarter more?
I’m in the
middle of a family movie marathon. With
the holiday film season in full swing, my son home from school and the family at
full strength again, we’ve been seeing a lot of movies. Tonight will make it six nights in a row, a
Fagin family record.
But every
night it’s the same conversation. Every
night, I step up to the concession stand.
Every night I get a medium soda.
Every night I get asked if I’d like a large for a quarter more. Every night I say “No thank you”.
Just how
good a deal am I passing up? A couple of
days ago I did an experiment.
I just
happened to have soda cups saved from previous movie outings. I filled each one
from the sink, and poured the water into a measuring cup. Following standard protocols for experimental
error, I performed each measurement five times and took an average.
The
results? A small movie cup of soda holds
492 milliliters of liquid, suspiciously close to 1 pint. A medium cup holds 956 ml, suspiciously close
to 1 quart. A large soda is 1296 ml, suspiciously
close to nothing I’ve ever heard of.
How much do
you get for your money? A small soda
costs $3.50, giving you about 1.4 units of soda per dollar. A medium drink is $4.00, which rounds to
2.4. Not too shabby.
But for
only a quarter more you can get a large, with a whopping SSF (Soda Satisfaction
Factor) of 3.0. That’s more than twice
as much soda per dollar, for only 21% more. How is that possible? Think “fixed costs”.
I’m not in
the theater business, but I suspect most of the cost in your tasty beverage is not
in the product itself. It’s in the building
to house it, the labor to pour it and other things that don’t change with the soda
you order. Larger drinks mean more
profits for the theater, because the fixed costs are the same. Hence the suggestive selling.
I know what
you’re thinking: What about the Ice
Factor? How does the inclusion of ice
affect the discriminating filmgoer’s imbibatory experience? Funny you should ask.
Based on
years of family nights out and careful scientific observation at the concession
stand, I can state categorically that they
put the same amount of ice in every cup. Ice appears to be part of the drink’s fixed
cost. (Ice also dilutes the soda over
time, but the mathematics to model that are inappropriate for a family
newspaper).
After
observing scientifically that the only scoop I have in my kitchen looks half
the size of one in a movie theater, I can confidently report the ice in a movie
cup displaces 165 ml of soda. This
changes the SSF to 0.9, 2.0 and 2.7 for a small, medium, and large. If you super-size that soda, you get triple
the sips for a fifth more money.
This seems
like a great deal. Should the discerning
cinephile take it?
Well,
maybe. A large soda is a *lot* of
soda. 1296 ml is way more than a quart,
particularly if you’re going to finish it in two hours. I don’t know about you, but when I buy a
large drink, I wind up with a lot of watery, flat soda when the credits roll. It’s not a bargain if you end up throwing it
away.
That’s the
bottom line. If you slurp to the bottom
of your soda before the big chase scene, maybe you should consider getting that
large for a quarter more. If you and
your date usually get small drinks, switch to one large and an extra straw. You’ll spend less and get more. That never happens in real life.
But if you
find yourself drinking the last drop of a large soda just because you’ve
already paid for it, or if you’ve got a tooth decay problem (what economists
call an “externality”), then drop to a medium or small. Just say no to the nice employees when they
offer an upgrade. They won’t be
offended, they’re just doing their jobs.
It’d be
nice, though, if they offered us a Perrier.