This Overpriced Restaurant Menu Item Is One You Probably Order Every Time

It's no surprise that the food on a restaurant's menu is typically more expensive than food you buy at the grocery store and make at home. However, while this is an understandable consequence of going to restaurants, one area where these higher prices are hard to wrap our heads around is drinks — especially sodas. While many will say that certain sodas taste better at fast food restaurants, soft drinks at dine-in restaurants can oftentimes cost as much as $3 to $4 for one cup with free refills if you're lucky.

This is a remarkably high price to pay for such a simple drink, and has earned soda a place on the long list of overpriced restaurant menu items that you should likely avoid. But it's even more startling when considering just how little it costs restaurants to produce the drinks. While store-bought soda prices have increased drastically since the 2010s, and have made purchasing cans or bottles of pop slightly more expensive across the board, restaurants that utilize fountain drink machines are likely spending pennies per soda. With a typical markup of 1,125%, soda hits higher than that of typical restaurant food, which sits at an average 300% markup.

The high price of soda at restaurants isn't a new phenomenon, and the reason for it can be ascribed to the convenience of purchasing it at the establishment. Similar to other items on a restaurant's menu, the price is marked up as the result of both the cost of purchasing it and the labor that goes into having it ready — or directly preparing it — for customers to enjoy. However, the thing that really makes soda at restaurants so pricey is the role it plays in overall profit margins. Soft drinks can often be the most profitable aspect of a restaurant due to their high markups, sometimes making the difference between a restaurant's success and its failure.

Plus, the high price for drinks — alongside smaller, non-shareable restaurant entrees — is so key to a restaurant's profits that they can sometimes help keep the relative prices of other menu items lower. So, while soda drinkers get a raw deal at their favorite restaurants, the high cost of the menu staple can benefit other patrons greatly in a roundabout way.