In news that doesn’t exactly have us cheesing, it seems like it may sadly be time we officially part with NYC’s dollar pizza slice.
After popularizing NYC’s highly adored “dollar slice,” 2 Bros. Pizza, one of the city’s go-to pizza spots, has said its goodbyes to the dollar slice, reports the New York Post. Pizza addicts will now have to shell out an extra 50 cents to get their hands on one of their slices.
The price increase is reportedly due to inflation, co-owner Eli Halali of 2 Bros. Pizza told the Post.
“Over the past few years, we had done everything in our power to keep the cheese slices at $1 while refusing to compromise on our quality. We were no longer able to break even,” said Halali.
Cheese slices at several NYC 2 Bros. Pizza locations have already gone up to $1.50, though as of March 20th the East Village location on St. Mark’s Place was still selling their slice for $1, according to the Post.
The chain’s owner, Mohammad Abdul, told the NY Times back in December of 2021 that they were holding out on raising prices for as long as they could, debating on possibly only raising the price 5 cents since “some customers don’t have the money to buy the pizza.”
Rising cheese costs, which are responsible for 40% of the company’s food bills, threw a wrench in their efforts, however.
“The biggest issue in recent months was cheese prices stabilizing at a higher average than where they’ve been for the last decade,” Halali told the Post.
Though we first found out we’d potentially have to say our goodbyes to the iconic dollar slice back in February of last year, we’re still not fully ready to part ways.
$1.50 is hardly a price to pay for a slice of pizza, however, considering some NYC pizza spots charge upwards of $4.00.
NYC-based Liam Quigley logged every slice of pizza he ate in NYC from 2014 to 2022, eating a whopping 464 slices of pizza throughout his journey, and over the eight-year period he tracked the increase of a plain slice of pizza.
Though his study totally excluded dollar slices, the fact of the matter is that the cost is sadly going up either way.
Quigley’s study shows Joe’s Pizza at 7 Carmine Street having the biggest jump in price, increasing by $1.25 since 2014.
Overall, the average price of a plain slice jumped from $2.52 to $3.00, a 19% increase. Plus, while the price increases the amount of sauce put on slices apparently decreases, according to Quigley.
When all was said and done (and eaten), Quigley had spent a whopping $1244.22 on pizza over the eight-year period. While we feel like we spend that amount each weekend we spend bar hopping around NYC, we can’t deny it would be much better if the slices we were buying were still priced at only $1.
You can see Quigley’s full study here.