When Fast Food Tacos Beat Your Home Kitchen
Tacos can be far more affordable from restaurants than making them at home, especially when cooking for one or two people. Think about it – you’ll need ground meat, taco shells, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, and all those seasonings. You’re probably only going to use a tiny bit of that big bunch of cilantro you had to buy, while restaurants already have all the toppings on hand and portion them perfectly.
Jack in the Box was famous for its two tacos for 99 cents deal, though prices have since increased to around $1.29-$1.99, with the two crunchy tacos featuring melty American cheese, shredded lettuce, and taco sauce – one of the best fast food deals out there. Among true fast foods, tacos top the list right now because they offer a more affordable price due to the low cost of production and goods, and when you take the bread equation out and are just using a tortilla, you get more bang for your buck.
The Rotisserie Chicken Reality Check
Rotisserie chickens are one of the best meal deals at grocery stores or takeout counters, with a fully cooked, seasoned whole chicken often costing about the same as or slightly more than a raw one – and when you factor in the time and energy to prep, season, roast, and clean up after making your own roasted chicken, the takeout version wins every time in both price and effort. It’s almost embarrassing how much cheaper it is to grab one already done.
Your grocery store probably sells these golden beauties for around five to eight bucks, while buying a raw chicken plus all the seasonings, oil, and the gas or electricity to cook it for an hour easily costs more. Plus, there’s no risk of dry breast meat or underdone thighs when someone else has already mastered the art.
Pizza That Actually Makes Financial Sense
For decades, Hot-N-Ready pizzas at Little Caesars were only five dollars, making it one of the best deals in the fast food industry, and even though they recently bumped up the price, it’s still a fantastic deal at about $6. Pizza remains the king because you can feed more people with less money.
Making pizza from scratch means buying flour, yeast, sauce ingredients, cheese, and toppings – easily hitting twenty dollars before you even turn on the oven. Fifty-five percent of respondents saved money just by switching to frozen pizza from the grocery store versus pizza from a restaurant. Even frozen grocery store pizza often costs more than Little Caesars when you’re feeding a family.
The Dollar Burger Math That Actually Works
The high cost of groceries and the surge in value menu items such as $1 fast food burgers support the notion that dining-out and cooking-in prices are converging – you certainly can’t make a burger at home for $1! Jack in the Box sells a handful of burgers for around $2.49-$3.29, including its Junior Jumbo Jack Cheeseburger and Junior Bacon Cheeseburger.
At around 85-95 cents per slider, White Castle’s cheese sliders represent an incredible deal in 2024 – their classic burgers haven’t been that cheap since 2011. When you break down the cost of ground beef (which has gotten ridiculously expensive), buns, cheese, pickles, and condiments, plus the time and cleanup, these value menu gems actually make sense for your wallet.
The truth is, fast food restaurants can buy ingredients in massive quantities and have perfected the art of portion control and efficiency. While a pound of ground beef at the grocery store might cost you six dollars or more, they’re getting it for a fraction of that cost and turning it into multiple profitable items.
