We recently kicked off the marathon of movies that we watch around the holidays by watching Home Alone. However, something random stood out to me at the beginning of the movie. Little Nero’s pizza would cost the same now, 30 years later.
Has the cost of pizza really not changed much in the past 30 years?
The Analysis
The McCallisters ordered 10 large pizzas from Little Nero’s Pizza. These 10 pizzas cost $122.50. We could break these down into types of pizzas since different toppings lead to different costs. For example, we do know that there weren’t too many plain cheese pizzas – the cheapest kind. Therefore, we would assume that at the time, these pizzas would have been on the costlier side of the pizza price scale.
Ignoring this fact, we can just assume that these pizzas cost, after tax and delivery fee, a little over $12 a pizza.
That’s 30 years and the price of pizza hasn’t changed!
Was Little Nero’s Ripping People Off?!?
As a comparison, let’s do a little spin on the Big Mac Index for this scenario. At the same time that the original Home Alone was filmed, the price of a Big Mac in the US cost about $2. Today, that same Big Mac will cost you over $4. That’s a 100% inflation on the Big Mac.
For Little Nero’s pizza though, it has had a 0% inflation! I can buy pizza from most pizza places today for $12 (or less).
The ingredients most assuredly have not gone down in price. The same with labor. Both of those have most assuredly increased. There also has not been a dramatic shift in the process of producing pizza that would account for the cost.
So, before Harry and Marv ever broke into any of those houses, had Little Nero’s already been ripping off the McCallisters?
While you ponder that, check out our Little Nero’s Pizza shirt as well as our other Home Alone t-shirts