Wing Cha-Ching!

It takes about 15 seconds to eat one, from start to finish. They cost about 79 cents a pound, raw at the supermarket. They are made up of bone more than meat.

So why are chicken wings at the restaurant so expensive?

I like a chicken wing as much as the next person. You can do a lot with a chicken wing, in terms of preparation. Chicken wings play nice with the various sauces and batter that coat them.

That's all fine and dandy, but does that equate to $9.99 for a dozen?

I use $9.99 as an arbitrary price, but that's in the ballpark.

I think we're being gouged on chicken wings.

The easy answer, of course, as to why the markup is so high, is that we consumers are willing to pay it.

Let's face it. Properly cooked chicken wings are a sight to behold.

They are slathered with sauce, which envelopes the crunchy skin, which is deep fried and/or baked deftly, so the meat inside stays tender and moist.

But when not done right, the chicken wing can be slimy, gummy and thoroughly unappetizing.

In either case, you can expect to pay about $9.99 a dozen.

I have no idea why we think that chicken wings are worth the price, but we pay it.

Heck, there's even entire restaurant chains that devote themselves to the chicken wing.

Buffalo Wild Wings (or B-Dubs, as the cool people say) comes to mind, as it did when a co-worker asked me last week if I wanted to go out to lunch.

We ate at a burger joint, but on the walk back to the office, a B-Dubs loomed.

"Do you like Buffalo Wild Wings?" I was asked.

That's when I launched into my chicken wing rant, to which you are now being exposed.

As far as B-Dubs goes, the family and I ate there a few years ago and I was underwhelmed. Again, the prices got to me---but frankly, I didn't think the wings were all that.

B-Dubs boasts that it offers lots of different flavors of wings, which is true. There are lots.

But they're still chicken wings, and they still take just 15 seconds each to consume. And they're still more bone than meat.

Let's face it: have you ever looked at the wing of any bird and licked your lips because they look so meaty?

Even a large Thanksgiving turkey doesn't have a wing that has enough meat to impress, much less a dinky chicken.

Yet restaurants boldly price their wings at obscene markup and we devour them by the basket-full.



OK, so they offer some celery sticks and blue cheese on the side. Whoop-de-doo.

We actually like to cook our own chicken wings at home, though it is some work to do it right. But we can also buy a huge bag of the frozen things at a dirt cheap price, relatively speaking.

Hint: most butchers will chop your wings up for you, for free, while you wait. That way, you can take them home in the same sizes and shapes as the ones you pay $9.99 for at the restaurant.

Some restaurateur hit the jackpot when he or she discovered that the cheap wing of a chicken could be baked, deep-fried and slathered with sauce and sold at a 500 percent markup. And that's as an appetizer.

Let's see. At $9.99 a dozen, and with chicken wings taking 15 seconds each to eat, that equates to three minutes' worth of eating time per dozen.

That means restaurants are charging us the equivalent of $200 an hour to enjoy their chicken wings! And we have to use our hands to eat them; we don't even get to use silverware.

At $200 an hour, what are chicken wings? The lawyers of food items?

Not to mention all the dry cleaning bills, thanks to the messy fingers and sauce dripping all over the place.

We're getting rooked but what else is new, right?

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