price disparity   (opinion)

I went to BJ's and Subway over my lunch break today. I bought soda at both places. At BJ's, I got 24 12oz cans of soda for $6.29 but at Subway I got a 12oz fountain soda for about a dollar IIRC. That's almost 400% more than BJ's charged me. BJ's smaller profit margins look a whole lot better when you multiply it by their volume, but you can't really beat the quick bang for the buck (read: i get screwed) at Subway.

I'm going to assume that they both make a profit off of selling soda, or put another way, that they sell it for more than they pay for it. Subway depends on its soda profit much more than BJ's, though, as evidenced by the fact that when you fill up a card with the free sub stamps, they require you to buy a soda in order to get your free 6-incher. I don't see anything wrong with that, as a matter of fact, it's quite clever of them to do that. It made me break out in a strangely mis-cheevy-us grin when I read the fine print. I guess I like figuring out why companies do seemingly strange things.

I don't really have a point, I just think it's funny that when you can buy regular retail products on eBay for half price that mainstream businesses can still get away with charging so much for sugar water even though other mainstream businesses charge a small fraction of the cost for the same product.