Salads and Sodas

Once a week or so I go out and get a big, $7 salad from a salad joint across the street. For the past month or so, they've been giving away free sodas with every large salad.

Sodas don't cost much. That's the point. McDs sells them for $1.29 and makes ~$1.20 profit, including the cost of the ice and cup. Ice is MORE expensive than soda, some studies claim. So, really, looking at it from THAT point of view, it's not like giving sodas away for free is COSTING them much...

Except the $1.20 that they would have made if they had SOLD it instead of GIVEN it away.

I've been trying to think of why they would persue this promotion. It's not something they're advertising (they don't advertise, since they're in the mall food court), they just do it.

Maybe, like me, most of their salad-eating clients don't buy soda. Even when they give one to me for free, I make it a lemonade. If nobody was BUYING soda, I can see taking a small hit to RADICALLY spike customer appreciation.

The only clear thing I get the impression of is that their large salads must be making them a BUNDLE to be willing to lose a dime off their profit with each sale. Has the price of lettuce dropped radically in the past few months?

...

These are the sorts of things I think of, okay? It makes me curious.