Operations
Can you guess where the cheapest pizza is in the U.S.?
Depending on location, pizza can be super cheap in the U.S. or super expensive. Find out how your state and city ranks when it comes to pizza prices and the number of pizzerias.
August 18, 2021
Depending on where one lives in the U.S., pizza can be super expensive or super cheap.
Those living in the state of North Dakota, for example, dole out just $6.64 for a pie while Alaska residents are handing over $9.21, according to an Expensivity.com report on pizza costs nationwide.
The report crunched pizza prices, mapping the average price of cheese/plain and pepperoni pizza across pizzerias in every state. It also looked at the average price by city and the density of pizzerias per person across the U.S.
When it comes to "pizzeria density" in each state, Rhode Island has 37 pizza places for every 100,000 residents. When it comes to city "density," Detroit, Michigan has the lowest number of pizzerias, with just 0.9 per 100,000 residents.
Here are some additional key findings:
- The city with the cheapest pepperoni pizza is Virginia Beach, VA ($6.26).
- Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has the highest city density (95.4 per 100k people).
- Oklahoma is home to America's priciest pepperoni: the average price is $15.56.
- Utah offers a $6.49 pepperoni that costs less than any pepperoni or plain cheese pizza across the rest of the States.
- Wilmington, NC, and Hayward, CA, are tied for America's cheapest plain cheese pizza. The average price is $6.35 in both cities.
"The team were most surprised to find that Detroit is the city with the lowest density of pizzerias in the US (just 0.9 per 100,000 people) — despite being the home of the popular Detroit-style pizza," Bruce L. Gordon, Expensivity CEO, said in an email interview. "Another fact that surprised us is that Rhode Island has 37.3 pizza joints for every 100,000 residents — the highest density of pizzerias for any US state. America's smallest state clearly has a lot of pizza lovers!"
The data on pizzerias, menus and prices were collected from MenuwithPrice. Cheese pizza prices were derived from an average of pizzas of all sizes, named "plain pizza," "cheese pizza," or "Margherita pizza." Pepperoni prices were derived from pizza of all sizes that had pepperoni as the singular topping.
City and state populations were taken from the U.S. Census Bureau. Only cities that had at least 10 pizzerias and a population of 100,000 or more people were included in the final dataset.
The number of pizzerias in each city and state was estimated using MenuWithPrice and Yelp API.
