Why prepared rotisserie chickens are cheaper than ones you cook yourself

Walk into almost any Canadian grocery store and you smell it. Delicious, juicy, rotisserie chicken. 

It's just sitting there, like a beacon, promising shoppers a hearty meal they don't have to cook or clean up after.

The pre-cooked birds are priced between $8 to $12 at larger grocery chains in Canada, but barring a sale in the meat department, raw chickens can often cost more per bird at those same grocery outlets.

The lower price of rotisserie chickens compared to raw at many stores is despite the additional cost of spices, packaging, labour and energy for the convenient meal.

So, what the peck is going on? CBC Radio's The Cost of Living dove into the henhouse to find out.

Major Canadian chains, including Loblaws, Sobeys, Save-On-Foods, Costco and Metro declined to comment on pricing strategies for their chickens. 

However, Rowe Farms, a smaller grocery chain based in Ontario, agreed to share some inside information. It's been selling rotisserie chickens since 2008.

According to Rowe Farms, it might look like you're paying less for a cooked bird, but you're usually getting a smaller chicken. Raw birds in the cooler section usually weigh between 1.6 and 1.8 kilograms, while chickens destined for the rotisserie spit are about 1.2 kg.

Roasted chickens need to be around the same size to cook evenly on a grocery rotisserie, according to the University of Arksansas' Casey Owens. She's a professor of poultry (yes, that's a thing).

"If they [grocery stores] get a carcass or chicken that's a little bit larger than that, it may not reach that temperature in the the right amount of time. So it's going to be very important that those chickens that they're rotissering are very uniform in size for food safety purposes," said Owens, whose official title is Professor of Poultry Science.

Rotisserie chickens are typically advertised with an average weight of 900 grams of cooked meat per chicken.

However even if smaller, a grocery store rotisserie can still be cheaper — by weight — than an uncooked chicken.

As an example, Cost of Living picked up a cooked cluck at a Calgary Costco.

The rotisserie chicken was priced at $7.99. After removing its plastic packaging and ties, the prepared poultry was weighed on a kitchen scale.