The Best-Value Fast Food Fries Are Unexpectedly Found At This Expensive Chain

A lot of the time, people shop on the concept of a good value. That typically means getting a healthy (if not hefty) volume of food for your buck. Online lender NetCredit recently released a report on the best value burgers and fries which compared the weight of burger patties at various chains as well as the amount of fries you get per order. We've previously zoomed in on what they discovered was the best fast food burger bang for your buck, but what about the fries? Based on regular (or medium) sized orders, the most amount of fries you get for your money comes from a different chain — one that's not exactly known for being cheap: Shake Shack.

That's right — the same Shake Shack that's home of the ShackBurgers with ShackSauce and fresh veggie toppings all on a potato roll. While the total price for an order of fries isn't the cheapest among all the chains, Shake Shack offers the best value thanks to its portion size. When weighed out, each ounce of fries is only $0.40. Compare that to Sonic, whose fries cost a whopping $1.27 per ounce, and you'll see how the value lines up. In second was Culver's, whose fries cost $0.50 per ounce, followed by Five Guys, whose typically enormous serving of fries breaks down to $0.54 per ounce. If you're curious about McDonald's, whose fries might be the first that come to mind when you imagine the finest drive-thru cuisine, it fell sort of mid-range. Its savory potato sticks rang in at $0.89 per ounce.

If you're just going for sheer volume, you probably won't be surprised to know that Five Guys sells the largest amount of fries per order. (Those of you who've been there can attest to this.) NetCredit discovered that each portion came in at 11.29 ounces, which is just shy of ¾ of a pound. That's easily enough to feed at least two people, and it seems that's the intent. One of the Five Guys themselves has mentioned that the chain deliberately tosses in an extra scoop of fries just to make sure everyone has enough.

The next-runner up in portion size was Shake Shack at 6.17 ounces per order. As previously mentioned, Shake Shack is what ended up winning in terms of price per ounce. But you know, whether or not you actually like those fries is up to you. Not everyone's a fan of crinkle fries, which is what Shake Shack sells. Again, using McDonald's as a measuring stick, the Golden Arches' portion size weighed in at 3.99 ounces total. Even though we might now consider their monetary value somewhat middling when it comes to the numbers, that secretly wouldn't stop us from eating them anyway, because when they're hot, you know there's nothing like them.