A single price has not moved since 2009 — through two recessions, a pandemic, and an egg market that doubled and then halved. The company says it holds the price on purpose and that doing so costs it tens of millions a year. Reality Daily accepts both statements and spent fourteen months looking for the meeting where the number gets decided again.
By Herschel Bove · 34 min read
The Item — A rotisserie cabinet, whole birds turning on spits under heat lamps. It is not one of the twenty-two floorplans measured for this story and there is no price tag in the frame, so it establishes nothing at all about $4.99; what it shows is the item, which is the only part of this account nobody disputes. In the stores we measured, a case like this one sits a median of 387 feet from the door and is visible from none of them.
