every once in a while a delicious food graces a fast food menu that actually tastes decent, and when it does a cheapskate college student such as myself must act upon it and as wisely as i can. wendy's chili may be one of the greatest additions to fast food in our lifetimes, and it is cheap to boot. the problem is, wendy's offers options and it is hard to know which is the very best. first of all, there are two chili sizes: a small for 99 cents and a large for 1.79, and the question that of course plagued me was: which is the better deal? my research on this matter led me to
wendys.com where it is stated (on average) a small chili is 8 ounces and a large is 12 ounces. with this information, one can conclude that the small chili is indeed the better deal. the small averages 12 cents per ounce whereas the large averages 15 cents per ounce. of course, this is just on average as i cannot take into account the small differences in the exact amount the workers put into the cup, the celery ratio per cup or other such factors. but likely the workers are not under-filling the two cups by a total of about 2.5 ounces, which is about what it would take to make the large equal in value to the small.
but the advantages to buying two smalls instead of one large does not stop there. when ordering "to go"; two 99 cent chilis come a lot closer to 2 dollars even than 1.79, so there is less annoying change to deal with. another annoying problem with wendy's is i cannot ever get enough hot sauce and crackers. hot sauce and crackers add valuable extra "weight" to the chili and try as i might to add "can i have a bunch of extra crackers and hot sauce" to my order, they never quite come through in the amount i would like. this likely creates another slight advantage to the two small chilis deal, the workers of wendy's often assume that the two smalls are for two people, thus probably giving more hot sauce and crackers. this purely a theory however, because i have not the means to test it. the only real evidence i have to reference is that i get two spoons with two small chilis at the drive-thru so i would assume that would mean the employees intended their amount of "free extras" to allow for two people.