It is one of the oldest pieces of culinary advice that if you want to save money, you should avoid prepared foods and cook from scratch.
This is true for a batch of brownies (39 cents versus over $2 for a boxed mix) and cut fruit (pineapple costs $2.75 per pound versus $4 for precut)
And particularly for ready-to-eat meals, which often cost roughly twice as much as the necessary ingredients to create them. However, rotisserie chicken is an exception to this rule.
In the majority of supermarkets, raw chicken is more expensive than its roasted equivalent.
Despite savings, a finished meal that doesn't need to be cleaned, stuffed, seasoned, or roasted at home seems like a better deal for time-pressed buyers.
Frequently, the golden, succulent rotisserie chickens found in grocery stores are the uneaten, raw chickens that are about to expire.
By selling them at a lower price, supermarkets make less than they would on raw birds, but far more than if they were discarded.
We have produced a list of the finest grocery store rotisserie chickens. Repurposing unsold products is a common practice at supermarkets.
Vegetables and meat are regularly added to prepared salads and deli dishes to decrease food wastage.