I'm not sure how we'd research this exactly, but it's something that I've gotten a bit curious about.
Consider a national family restaurant chain like, oh, Sizzler or Red Lobster, a chain that prides itself on offering a uniform menu and dining experience no matter where you go in the country. Surely it must cost more on the whole to run locations outside of major cities, especially if there's seafood on the menu. Cities are where all the freight traffic concentrates, so running a restaurant in the "heartland" is bound to run up heavier expenditures from having to truck supplies over greater distances.
And yet...somehow I suspect that prices will always be lower in the heartland locations, partly for political reasons: the corporate executives in charge are highly likely to be very right-wing and therefore committed to the national myth that nobody knows how to run anything properly in The Big City™ because of all the lazy wasteful liberals, whereas in The Heartland™ everyone knows the value of a dollar and works hard and blah blah. Jacking up prices in city locations in order to subsidize lower prices in the hinterland serves a practical purpose—luring in travellers making snap decisions about where to eat on a long road trip—but I suggest that it also suits the purposes of reactionary politics.
So? am I right? am I wrong? lucky guess? &c.
~Chara
