Picking the right pizza size can be surprisingly difficult.
With my phone poised above the order button for my preferred delivery spot, I pause.
How famished am I, really? Will I actually eat the leftovers? Do I need those leftovers? (Spoiler: I almost always do.)
Or I’m dining out and wildly gesturing a circular shape with my hands as I ask the server how large that 16-inch pie really is.
Either way, it often feels like I’m guessing in the dark.
Luckily, you can stop worrying — because NPR’s Planet Money crunched the numbers: To maximize pizza per dollar, always pick the largest size available.
How to Cut Costs on Pizza
No need to dust off your geometry notes or struggle with pi (the pizza kind of pie) — Planet Money already did the hard work. Here’s the takeaway:
Even though a 16-inch pie may not appear that much larger than an 8-inch, the math shows you’re getting far more pizza for each cent you spend.
Recall your high school geometry lessons.
The area of a circle grows with the square of its radius. Remember the trusty πr2 equation? That means a 16-inch pizza is actually four timesthe area of an 8-inch pizza.
That’s quadruple the layer of gooey cheese and your favorite toppings (be it Canadian bacon or a mountain of pepperoni).
And going for the smaller pie will cost you, discovered reporter Quoctrung Bui, who examined 74,476 price points across 3,678 pizza establishments nationwide.
“To get the same amount of pizza you get in a 16-inch pizza, you’d have to spend an extra $2.35 on 14-inch pizzas, or an extra $16.41 on 8-inch pizzas,” he sums up.Here’s how much you’d need to shell out in each size to end up with the same quantity of pie:
Who would pay an additional $16 for the identical amount of pizza?!
So my weekly ordering quandary has a simple solution: Always choose the larger pizza, and embrace those leftovers.
Get Even Better Deals on Pizza
If you want to trim costs on your large pie even further, try stacking discounts.
Search for coupons and promotional codes, and watch for limited-time offers like these.
Another smart move: use a cash-back credit card (but use it responsibly). Some cards give bonus cash back for dining or restaurant purchases.
Or keep an eye on stores selling Pepsi and scan for the pizza emoji promotions.
Also, mark your calendar for February 9 — it’s National Pizza Day (yes, it’s a real holiday), which usually means a flood of coupons and promotions — and more cheese, please.
Your Turn: Which pizza size do you usually pick? Have you ever done the math?
Alex Monroe is a junior staff writer at Savinly. After recently finishing grad school, Alex spends time hunting for ways to save money — and adjusting to life back under his parents’ roof.
