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Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Had an interesting thought this morning. I bought a donut, and realised that even tho' they charge you the same price for each donut they must vary slightly in how much they cost to make. An Old Fashioned Plain like I had this morning, which has no icing or fancy flavouring, presumably costs slightly less than a Double Chocolate with its chocolate flavouring and chocolate icing. It would be interesting to know if they keep track of such things, and hope you'll buy lots of the cheaper to make donuts. A cent or two might not seem like much, but spread that out over the millions of donuts a chain like Tim Hortons sells in a month and things could get interesting. The same thing has traditionally applied to candy bars as well, with the "regular" size bars all being offered at the same price even tho' the cost presumably varies with the contents ie a bar with almonds in it must cost slightly more to make than an otherwise identical bar that contains no almonds.

Of course when you consider the variables in price of things like pop you have to wonder as well. How much does 2 litres of Coke cost to make, and how much profit is Coke making when store X sells it for 99 cents a litre? Is it sold to them at the same wholesale price as store y that's selling it at $1.79 a litre, or is it a promotional deal? We are talking about some water with carbonation and flavouring added, so the cost per litre could be pretty damn cheap. Don't hold your breathe waiting for Coke to tell you, because you know they won't.

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