You’ve been seeing it in your food bills and just about everywhere else. Now you’ll see it when you drop by your favorite slice shop. Inflation, the supply-chain mess, and labor shortages have forced the pizzaioli behind the city’s famous buck-a-slice shops to tell their hungry customers who drop a $1 bill on the counter “fuhgeddaboudit!” At Joey Pepperoni’s in Murray Hill, a $1 slice is now $1.50. It gets worse. Mona Lisa Pizzeria in Staten Island had upped its price to $2.75 a slice.
Don’t be misled by the online menus of many pizzerias, which still show the old prices. Updating their online menu is often one of the last tasks many restaurant owners attend to.
Another factor that is driving the $1-a-slice pizza slice to extinction is the precipitous rise in energy costs. The gas used to power pizza ovens, the New York Post notes, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is up 20.6% over the past year.
If you’re looking to beat the system by learning to perfect your own pizza at home, fuhgeddaboudit again. As the article also reveals, the costs of tomatoes, flour, and cheese are up 76%, 50%, and 10% respectively.
