About Froqel

Who writes this

Froqel is written and checked by one person, me, Joshua C. Pulley. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a chef. I'm not a food journalist, and I don't have a hospitality or research credential to point to. What I have is time spent comparing published menu prices against what Canadian chains actually charge, and enough irritation at getting it wrong myself early on to keep doing it properly now.

I'd rather say that plainly than dress it up. A missing credential doesn't make a number wrong, and a credential doesn't make one right either. What matters here is whether a price has been checked against a real source, dated, and labelled. That's the whole job, and it's one person's job.

Why this site exists

I started keeping my own price records after noticing how often published Canadian restaurant menus didn't match what a chain actually charges at the counter. The gap wasn't random, and once I measured it, the pattern turned out to be too precise to be coincidence.

Take Kelsey's. I compared five items on a commonly published Kelsey's price list against the chain's own Markham, Ontario menu and against Uber Eats. All five matched Uber Eats exactly, to the cent, at a ratio of 1.2001 times the in-restaurant price. A Chicken Parm listed at $27.59 online is really $22.99 at the till, a $4.60 gap on a single plate. The same 1.2001 multiplier turns up again on 27 of Montana's listed price ranges. Kelsey's and Montana's are both owned by Recipe Unlimited, and the ratio holding across two separate chains under one parent company is the strongest evidence I have that this isn't sloppy publishing. It's delivery pricing, presented as restaurant pricing, with the markup baked in and left unlabelled.

Here's the practical part for anyone reading a Canadian menu price online: if the number isn't labelled by channel, counter, takeout, or delivery, assume it could be running about 20% high.

How prices get on this site

Every price on Froqel comes from a chain's own posted menu, from published menu data I can trace to a source, or from an in-person check I did myself. Each price carries the date it was verified and, where I have it, the location it came from. Where a source declares whether a figure is a counter price or a delivery price, that label stays attached to the number all the way through. Where a source doesn't say, the page says that instead of guessing.

What this site won't do

Froqel doesn't publish a price it hasn't seen. It doesn't present a delivery price as if it were a counter price. And it doesn't fill a gap with an estimate dressed up as a fact.

Two examples show what that looks like in practice. Cineplex concession pricing isn't on this site, because I haven't verified it against Cineplex's own numbers. The movie theatre snack guide here covers Landmark Cinemas instead, checked item by item, and a Cineplex page will go up once its pricing is confirmed the same way. And the McDonald's page here isn't a national price list. It's one restaurant in Toronto, Ontario, because McDonald's Canada doesn't have a national price list to publish: almost every location is an independently owned franchise setting its own prices. A page that pretended otherwise would be guessing at every price on it.

The same rule holds everywhere else on the site. If a number can't be backed with a source, it doesn't go up, or it goes up marked n/a.

How this site makes money

Froqel runs on display advertising. That's it. There are no affiliate links on any price page, and no chain has paid, or been asked, for coverage or placement. A restaurant's prices land on this site because I checked them, not because the restaurant wanted them here.

Found something wrong?

If a price here doesn't match what you paid, I want to know about it. Go to the contact page and send the details. Corrections get checked against a source before anything changes, and the page's verification date moves when it does.