A Name:

Lunch at Benny’s
A Problem Solving Exercise
Date:

The Scenario
Mr. Jones brought his three children to Benny’s Diner
to have lunch today.
James, who is twelve years old, ordered a bacon
cheeseburger plate. It had a menu price of $6.50. Mr.
Jones ordered a chef’s salad which was $2.70 more.
Sarah, age seven, and Samantha, age six, both ordered
grilled cheese sandwiches. Each of them also ordered a drink which cost $1.20 each.
When the bill came, Mr. Jones noticed that the total of the prices of the items
(before tax) was exactly $30.

The Problem
What was the menu price of one grilled cheese sandwich?

Hints
❏ Try to find out the prices of the other items first.
❏ A good strategy might be to work backwards from the total after you determine the other
prices.

Extra
What will Mr. Jones pay for lunch if the tax rate is 8%?

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A Lunch at Benny’s
A Problem Solving Exercise

Solution
This problem requires the use of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of
decimals before the cost of one grilled cheese sandwich can be revealed. Addition is
needed to identify the cost of the salad, multiplication for the total of the drinks, subtraction
to find out the cost of both sandwiches and division to get the final answer. At any step along
the way, students might forget that a certain step is needed. Fortunately for them, any
misstep will result in a sandwich price which doesn’t make sense. Based on the price of the
bacon cheeseburger, a grilled cheese sandwich should be somewhere in the three to six
dollar range. If their result comes out to be over the price of the salad, they should know that
something is wrong, such as forgetting to divide by two.
We know from the problem description what the bacon cheeseburger cost and what
each of the drinks cost. We can also do some decimal addition and establish what the salad
cost. We don’t know what the grilled cheese sandwiches cost, but we do have the total of all
the items. We can start by adding up the known values:
$6.50 + ($6.50 + $2.70) + (4 x $1.20) = $20.50
Since the total of the items was $30, we can subtract the total of the known items and
come out with the difference:
$30.00 - $20.50 = $9.50
There were two grilled cheese sandwiches, so we have to divide this result by two.
$9.50 / 2 = $4.75
So the price of one grilled cheese sandwich is $4.75.
We can verify this by adding up all the items again:
$6.50 + ($6.50 + $2.70) + (4 x $1.20) + (2 x $4.75) = $30.00

Solution to Extra
We can multiply $30 by .08 to find out the amount of tax on the bill, or we can multiply it
by 1.08 to get the total including tax. Since the problem asked for the total amount paid, we
should use the second approach:
$30.00 x 1.08 = $32.40
The total paid by Mr. Jones is $32.40.

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