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- A famous New York Pizza shop is upping the price of its $1 pizza slices by 50% due to inflation.
- 2 Bros Pizza said the increasing price of cheese is making up over 40% of the company's food costs.
- Sky-high inflation in the US is killing bargain prices and dollar stores since the pandemic.
A famous pizza shop in New York known for popularizing $1 pizza slices has been hit hard by inflation and is upping its prices to $1.50 per slice.
2 Bros Pizza, a New York restaurant chain, is increasing the price of its pizza slices at its East Village location – an area in lower Manhattan, local news site EV Grieve first reported.
"Over the past few years, we had done everything in our power to keep the cheese slices at $1 while refusing to compromise on our quality," its co-owner Eli Halali told the New York Post."We were no longer able to break even."
Halali said the price of cheese comprises over 40% of the company's food cost.
"The biggest issue in recent months was cheese prices stabilizing at a higher average than where they've been for the last decade," he told the Post,
Halali had already raised prices to $1.50 at three of its nine locations, particularly in newer stores with fewer loyal customers, the New York Times reported in 2021.
Halali told The Times that increased cheese prices would be "the straw that breaks the camel's back with respect to the dollar-pizza business," adding that 2 Bros is "committed to keeping our plain slice at $1 where we can for as long as we can." According to The Times, 2 Bros helped make the dollar slice mainstream in New York in the 2010s.
A 21-year-old student at The New School, James DeCamp, told the Post: "I usually get three slices, but now I'm only getting two … Everywhere else is doing the exact same thing. I've been watching the price go up by two and three times over the past year. This sucks."
Sky-high inflation in the US has been killing bargains and dollar stores since the pandemic, Insider reported in 2022.
Alongside $1 pizza slices, dollar store chains like Dollar Tree and grocery store chains like Trader Joe's are making products pricier by the year.
2 Bros Pizza did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment about the price increase.