You'll never guess how much this mom paid for a child-size personal pizza at Chuck E. Cheese.
Between Mickey Mouse's meal prices and Mr. Cheese's expensive pizza, these mascot mice are raking in the dough (pun intended).
Now, it's no secret that if you go to a place where one company controls all the food options, or there are limited places to go—like the movie theater, baseball stadium, the airport, music festival, or amusement park—you're going to pay a premium.
Sometimes, it'll be a 20% markup. Other times, you could end up paying almost double what something would cost in the "regular world."
And just because kids get child-size portions at these places, doesn't mean the cost is all that much smaller.
In a viral video with more than 1 million views, a mom shares the shocking amount Chuck E. Cheese charged her for her daughter's small pizza. The price would prompt many parents to give the classic "We've got food at home" line.
In the video, mom Erica shows the six-slice personal pizza her daughter got, which, for scale, all fit on the inside of a paper plate.
@erica2182 How much do you think this cost?#chuckycheese#fyp#longisland#newyork ♬ original sound - Erica ????????
"How much do you think this plate of pizza cost?" she asks viewers.
Here are some guesses:
"Should be $5 but probably $20," a top comment read.
"1.99 month with klarna," a person joked.
"$10 maybe that’s how much it is at Pizza Hut," another reasoned.
"Probably the price of 3-4 frozen pizzas," a commenter guesstimated.
We won't leave you hanging on the price.
Erica paid a whopping $16.92 with tax. That's $12.99 for the pizza and $2.59 for the handful of pepperoni slices on top.
In follow-up videos, Erica says that it's not that she couldn't afford the pizza cost—she states that she knew how much it was going to cost her before she placed the order—she was just taken aback by how much such a tiny combination of dough, sauce, cheese, and pepperoni was selling for.
For context, a normal shareable pepperoni pizza at the mouse's house costs $25 (in NYC). You can get a large 5-topping pizza at Domino's for $10.99 (with promo) or a DiGiorno frozen pizza for $6.99.
While Chuck E. Cheese is not your standard "fast-food" spot, the price is in line with the trend of rapidly increasing prices.
In the last decade, fast-food menu prices rose between 39% and 100% on average—well above the inflation rate, a Finance Buzz study found.
The Street found that of the 30 most popular menu items across fast-food spots, only three hadn’t changed in price in the last three years. The ones that did increase did so significantly, with some doubling and even tripling in price.
The Daily Dot reached out to Erica for comment via TikTok direct message and to Chuck E. Cheese via email.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
The post ‘The price of 3-4 frozen pizzas’: Chuck E. Cheese customer shocked after finding out the cost of 6 mini slices meant for a child appeared first on The Daily Dot.
