I’m a pretty frequent customer of the Cosi in my building, and most mornings on the way in to work, I pick up a buttered bagel with coffee, and the price is consistently inconsistent. As I’m pretty sure bagel prices do not fluctuate with the price of a barrel of gas, I’m at a loss as to why I am charged something different every day. I decided to write them a letter, which I submitted through the feedback form on their website, to see if they could provide any additional insight:

To Whom It May Concern -

I’m a frequent Cosi customer (I go at least three days a week), but I’ve been troubled lately by a phenomenon I’ve been calling “The Incredible Price-Shifting Squagel.”

Some explanation: I call it a “Squagel” because where I come from (Long Island, a suburban area of New York) bagels are round, but the ones at Cosi are square. I call it “Incredible Price-Shifting” because every time I go in there, it seems to cost a different price!!

There’s a Cosi in my building (233 N. Michigan) and I always stop in on the walk to work. I start looking forward to my bagel around Lake & Wells, and by Wacker & State, I can hardly contain myself!

I always get the same exact thing: everything bagel, toasted double (I always say “until dark, please”), with a medium coffee. Sometimes it doesn’t come out as dark as I’d like, but I understand there are other customers and the toaster machines can be finnicky. A lightly toasted squagel is better than a charred squagel.

Sometimes, these items cost me a total of $3.20. Other times, this cost $3.30. A few times, it cost me $3.60! And for a while, one employee would always ring it up as costing $2.20. I would repeatedly ask her (just once per visit, I’m not crazy or anything): “Are you sure it’s supposed to cost $2.20? It always rings up as $3.30!” to which she would say “Yes. The bagel and coffee combo includes cream cheese, but you got butter, and we don’t charge for butter, so that’s why it’s less,” to which I’d say “yay!” (in my head) and hand over my credit card to be charged a total of $2.22. I’ve got a receipt that shows this, and I can arrange to send it if that would be helpful.

Whenever someone else rings me up, the total is always higher, and while they’re always very helpful in trying to arrive at the magic triple-2’s, they’re never successful in doing so.

I feel bad, because I don’t want to hold up the line every morning while the cashier tries to hack the cash register, and be known as “that cheapskate $2.22 guy,” but at the same time, from $2.22 to $3.20 is almost a 50% increase in price! (I just want to reiterate that the staff have been very helpful and professional, and my requests to “ring it up again, like this receipt” have never been met with nasty responses of any kind.)

So, can you please clarify:
1) Do you charge for butter?
2) If so, does butter cost less than cream cheese?
3) What should an everything bagel, double toasted with butter, and a medium coffee cost?
4) Who came up with the idea for a square bagel, anyway?

Thanks in advance for your help, and please let me know if I can provide any more information to help in this investigation.

Best,
Cheapskate $2.22 Guy

Here is a copy of two receipts showing the price differential:

The Rising Cost of Bagels

Has any one else run into this?!? I’ll post a response from Cosi Corporate when I hear back….

Related posts:

1. The Incredible Price-Shifting Squagel, Part II
2. The Incredible Price-Shifting Squagel, Part III

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.