In a lot of places, rotisserie chicken are a loss-leader - they are sold below cost in order to entice more shoppers in the hopes that they will buy enough other things to more than make up for it.
Costco does this, not only on their hotdogs but also on their chickens also.
A lot of other times, raw commodity materials are more valuable than finished goods because of the implied value; ie there is an opportunity cost associated with transforming it into a finished good.
Rotisserie chickens are probably made with ones close to the expiry date. Nobody is going to buy a whole raw chicken that’s best before tomorrow.
rotisserie chickens are bred for that purpose and their lives are cut short to meet the cost and weight targets of the largest customers (walmart, etc), which means the facilities can produce ‘more’ in the same amount of time than roasters. they cost $6-10 here and $5-6 on sale (higher $ is at the regional convenience store chain, lower is wm), and i can frequently find ‘old’ ones in the cooler at wm marked down to $2 (yea, just two bucks each).
roasters are larger, priced by weight, and usually cost more (per bird) than rotisserie chicken. here, they’re $10-12 at wm, $15 and up at the ‘local’ grocery store. they’re rarely on sale.
I’ve kinda been feeling like a rotisserie chicken myself lately ngl
As a general rule of thumb, any in-store prepared food in a large grocery store (the ones that come in the store’s own packaging) was probably raw food that had been sitting for ages and they couldn’t sell in time. They’ll literally cut mold out of fruits and slice up the rest for those plastic platters. Every time they re-print a label, it resets the expiry date and you have no idea how many times they’ve done that and just shuffled food around by turning it into different forms.
CBC Marketplace video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxCT_D6HBd8
Counterpoint: avoid chain stores and just grow a giant cheese. You won’t just throw away that mold huh, Imiselda?
Umm, Lilly makes a good point.
Is it fair to ask where this ‘Lilly’ person lives/shops?
I like cooked chicken cheaper than raw chicken too…
Monkey’s paw curls. Raw chicken is now more expensive than cooked chicken; The price of cooked chicken remains the same.
Ok, what can I afford then???
Sadness.
I’m a millennial bin used to having that for dinner.
