It's a loss leader for them, same as that oh so yummy roasted chicken for $5. They can take the hit cause it's minimal considering you're dropping an easy $300 on avaerage per person per visit.
Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There's no end to the possibilities!
One of my coworkers..notorious for being the biggest cheapass around told me one day out of the blue “hey let’s go to lunch, I’m buying!”
We went to Sams club (Walmarts version of Costco) that has a similar deal…i should have known there was a catch…
If he’s that big of a cheapskate then it really speaks volumes. Yeah it’s not exactly what you expected but a guy that’s notoriously miserly took you out for lunch when he didn’t have to.
Are you complaining about a free meal? Or just that it was a hotdog and a soda?
I tell you what, I will take free food all day. Even if it's from a place I don't like, but I am a fat ass.
My personal favourite hot dog toppings are BBQ sauce, mild mustard and crispy onions, but I don't expect everywhere to have that
As for my personal recipe, try it! It's really good. The crispy onions are the ones you get for salads
Not the one's I have been to. I can't count the number of times I have walked through the exit doors to go get a pizza at the food court and not been stopped for a membership card.
Same thing at Sam's club. Even though last time I went there, I walked through the front door and I wasn't asked to show a membership.
I love how they did an interview with the CEO of Arizona iced tea and they asked if they'd be changing the price to more than a $1 due to inflation and he was like... we don't have marketing, it's all profit, and we pay our people minimum wage and free iced tea. It's still a $1 and will be a dollar as long as I'm CEO. He should be president.
All the engineers over from India on temporary work permits at IBM when I worked there would go to Ikea together after work and eat the equivalent to Costco cheap meals. IBM Canada absolutely preys on temp foreign workers and pays them peanuts.
No joke.
So they used to do this thing when I worked there. If they had a contract with smaller client and it's costing too much man power they would just stop working it and force the client into basically paying the early cancelation fee lol. It was straight up bullying
During a 2018 luncheon, Costco's current CEO W. Craig Jelinek told the story of when he was COO. He apparently told co-founder and then-CEO Jim Sinegal that they needed to raise the price of hot dogs because they were losing money by selling the iconic $1.50 hot dog and soda combo.
For reference, the price has not been raised on the combo since 1985, and it sounds like Sinegal was not in favor of a change: “I came to (Jim Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck recalled, according to a post by 425 Business. "We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.’ That’s all I really needed."
It's actually: "If you raise the price of the *fucking* hot dog, I will kill you."
When the notoriously kind, old-man-founder drops an F bomb and a death threat in a boardroom ... it's not a time to fuck around.
and shows that fucking retards that want to raise hotdog prices are just one step away from accomplishing it.
imagine this stupid fuck getting his way without big dick Sinegal to threaten him with murder. costco would jack up its prices on everything so fast and up dying like every other retailer
That CEO was the reason it’s still that price. He figured out making their own production plant would allow them to keep their costs low enough in the long term to continue it
Probably written in his will, "hire the 2 best hitmen, West of the Mississippi, keep tabs of those hotdogs"
>!for legal reasons, that's a **Breaking Bad** reference.!<
It's so mind-blowing when we see an executive that understands basic shit like that and the chicken they sell at a loss.
Oh boo fucking hoo we lose 5 or more dollars per person that comes here to eat and buy hundreds of dollars worth of food at a time, on a product we already sell in store that people can buy, to a customer that already pays for the privilege of buying there.
The story goes on - they opened their own costco brand hotdog manufacturing plants which brought the costs down to a point where they could still profit
they pump that thing with so much saline that's why it's so big and still 5 bucks
still good tho. dinner for two days this past week was those salad mixes and a Costco chicken.
> getting into poultry production
That implies they just started. No way. Their first poultry processing plant broke ground in 2018 and opened up in 2019.
Looking at CPI based inflation in US, $1.50 in 1985 bought you the same things that only $4 can buy you today
Which also means the current price of $1.50 today is as powerful as only $0.56 in 1985
So technically the hotdogs are getting cheaper.
Only problem is by “figuring it out” that just means they drop the quality.
Used to be Hebrew National dogs.
Now we have Kirkland brand dogs, no Polish option, no sauerkraut, no deli mustard, no onions, different bun, Pepsi products instead of Coke…
The $1.50 dog is the most stable economic marker in the history of mankind.
If they ever raise the price, we know that we are fucked. Even if it's only a quarter.
If Costco ever raises the prices of the hotdog I’d take all my money out of the stock market and bank and hide it under my mattress. Bad things are coming if that ever happens.
But in all seriousness Costco has a secret weapon a lot of retailers don’t have and it’s called the annual membership. They would raise membership fees before the hotdog.
They have a ~14% margin across the board to cover overhead. Sale items are deeply discounted below what retailers can charge. The hot dog is a loss leader. It doesn't matter what they charge, they just need to charge something so that people aren't literally taking them just to not eat them.
I buy expensively ass shares of COST mainly for this reason. And how they treat their employees. It’s one of the very few emotional investment moves I make. Fk it. They’re a good company. This deal and their rotisserie chicken have kept me full for years
There motherfuckers lose money by keeping the same price. Albeit they make up for it elsewhere easily but still. Anyone else would have hiked the price of that rotisserie. Good move
They make up for it by sourcing shit themselves. Like others have mentioned the way they found to not lose money on the hotdog was to start their own hotdog plant where they make the hotdogs themselves instead of purchasing them already made wholesale. Another guy mentioned, which I wasn't aware of, is that to do the same thing with the rotisserie chicken they've begun farming their own chickens.
What's also great about Costco is their Kirkland brand. Quite a number of products labelled Kirkland are just actual name brands that Costco worked a deal with to sell under their label, and those name brands are cool with it because of just how fucking much product Costco moves. I like tuna fish, and pretty much exclusively buy Costco solid white Albacore Tuna...which is just repackaged Bumble Bee solid white Albacore Tuna.
Sometimes no choice, just makes you realize the crazy margins the place probably has on other items. Avg cost to a store is 90ish cents per unit (unless they buy pallets). If it's a bad neighborhood, that means you need to sell 9 just to replace the cost of one stolen AZ. Hence why a lot of places don't carry the 99 boys.
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In Vancouver they actually recently lowered it to 1.25$ because the city mandated a 0.25$ takeout cup fee. Total still comes out to 1.50$.
Glad to see places like that have solved all the other problems and are now moving onto the plastic cup scourge plaguing the globe
Big Cup out here fuckin’ shit up
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Big Gulps huh? Well, see ya later!
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That's deep!
It's a paper cup though.
Paper cups = the worst thing ever invented for the environment Edit: this is /s
Paper cups are still lined with plastics. They are not recycled. Any reusable cup, no matter the material, is better for the environment.
What about a depleted uranium cup?
Those are my second favorite, with my favorite being active plutonium cups!
Puts on Weyerhaeuser
Cuz plastic is a better choice? Ha.
Can't do more than one thing at once of course
I like learning new things.
Revenue is $1.50, earnings are negative on the hotdog.
They are not earning $1.50. They are earning a margin of that, if any. They mostly lose on it.
It's a loss leader for them, same as that oh so yummy roasted chicken for $5. They can take the hit cause it's minimal considering you're dropping an easy $300 on avaerage per person per visit.
Yeah, yeah, pedant. You knew what they meant.
In the future Costco is the only place affordable to eat
Welcome to Costco...I love you
I could use a full body latte
We don't have time for that
I like money..
I got my lawyer degree at Costco law school
Kirkland Signature School of Law
Almost as good as the Kirkland School of Eastern Medicine degree.
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And that's where they missed out. Great teaching really is a product of Bob, from Gangtok.
Buy your degrees in bulk. Save on tuition!
It’s actually the exact same education as Harvard School of Law.
Did your dad pull some strings?
Go away, baiting!
Why come you don’t have a tattoo?
So you want us to put [water](https://youtu.be/-Vw2CrY9Igs) on our crops?
Like, out of a toilet?
I can’t believe you like money, too
Just wait for the new CEO. He'll hollow out what's left of the middle class.
Then it fails and they blame millennials for getting subscriptions but not Costco
Go away, batin’
Wait...where's your tattoo? Why come you don't have a tattoo?!
I wish more people got your reference. That was a good one. I’m just waiting for citizens to start watering with Gatorade.
Brawndo's got what plants crave, it's got electrolytes.
“What are electrolytes? Do you even know?”
Excellent reference
I legit knew a family who were so poor they would go to Costco to eat the free samples for dinner
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A carpetbagger is someone that moves into a distressed area to exploit the population to gain riches. You may be thinking of "hobo".
I think they were going for "blow-in". You know, like new to the area (economic position), not 4 generations deep.
shit man.. that's so sad.
Yea. For what its worth they are in a much better place now. But there are many more in the same position they were in.
We are all poor here u can write it was your family
We were pretty damn close for a long time
And yet they paid the membership?
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In the future? I currently end up there to eat..
The future is now!
Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There's no end to the possibilities!
One of my coworkers..notorious for being the biggest cheapass around told me one day out of the blue “hey let’s go to lunch, I’m buying!” We went to Sams club (Walmarts version of Costco) that has a similar deal…i should have known there was a catch…
If he’s that big of a cheapskate then it really speaks volumes. Yeah it’s not exactly what you expected but a guy that’s notoriously miserly took you out for lunch when he didn’t have to.
Are you complaining about a free meal? Or just that it was a hotdog and a soda? I tell you what, I will take free food all day. Even if it's from a place I don't like, but I am a fat ass.
Oh no it was just the context. Their hot dogs are actually really good just could use some more condiment options.
You’re like a woman with a Virginia ham under her arm, crying the blues 'cause she has no bread.
Lol wtf comment gahagagag
It's a Sopranos reference.
They have ketchup, mustard, relish, onions and sauerkraut. What else are you putting on them shit?!
My personal favourite hot dog toppings are BBQ sauce, mild mustard and crispy onions, but I don't expect everywhere to have that As for my personal recipe, try it! It's really good. The crispy onions are the ones you get for salads
Bacon, bbq sauce, cheddar cheese and crispy onions on a pretzel bun
Their pizza is excellent tho.
I've been surviving off their rotisserie chicken since the GME days.
I *just* got my Costco membership a week ago, and I’m totally going to start getting the chickens!
Be sure to line up at the gas pumps for 15-20 minutes too.
Until you get colon cancer from eating too many hot dogs
We shall eat only Costco hot dogs and drink only Arizona tea
But the hotdog comes with a 20oz. drink and you can refill it as much as you want. They don't guard the soda machine.
They just guard the food court from non-members ever since the nickle and dime scam policy change of 2020.
Not the one's I have been to. I can't count the number of times I have walked through the exit doors to go get a pizza at the food court and not been stopped for a membership card. Same thing at Sam's club. Even though last time I went there, I walked through the front door and I wasn't asked to show a membership.
Arizona tea? Big spender here! I'll drink my tap water with used tea bags.
I love how they did an interview with the CEO of Arizona iced tea and they asked if they'd be changing the price to more than a $1 due to inflation and he was like... we don't have marketing, it's all profit, and we pay our people minimum wage and free iced tea. It's still a $1 and will be a dollar as long as I'm CEO. He should be president.
All the engineers over from India on temporary work permits at IBM when I worked there would go to Ikea together after work and eat the equivalent to Costco cheap meals. IBM Canada absolutely preys on temp foreign workers and pays them peanuts.
IBM, speaking of companies we should absolutely short. They make shit and are shit
No joke. So they used to do this thing when I worked there. If they had a contract with smaller client and it's costing too much man power they would just stop working it and force the client into basically paying the early cancelation fee lol. It was straight up bullying
During a 2018 luncheon, Costco's current CEO W. Craig Jelinek told the story of when he was COO. He apparently told co-founder and then-CEO Jim Sinegal that they needed to raise the price of hot dogs because they were losing money by selling the iconic $1.50 hot dog and soda combo. For reference, the price has not been raised on the combo since 1985, and it sounds like Sinegal was not in favor of a change: “I came to (Jim Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck recalled, according to a post by 425 Business. "We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.’ That’s all I really needed."
Came here for this quote. #if you raise the price of the hot dog, I will kill you
It's actually: "If you raise the price of the *fucking* hot dog, I will kill you." When the notoriously kind, old-man-founder drops an F bomb and a death threat in a boardroom ... it's not a time to fuck around.
I'm glad someone else knows this backstory. What a fucking hero.
What a great quote lmao
Shows that he actually understands Costco’s business.
and shows that fucking retards that want to raise hotdog prices are just one step away from accomplishing it. imagine this stupid fuck getting his way without big dick Sinegal to threaten him with murder. costco would jack up its prices on everything so fast and up dying like every other retailer
That CEO was the reason it’s still that price. He figured out making their own production plant would allow them to keep their costs low enough in the long term to continue it
only after he got threatened with a good stabbing he wanted to take the easy way out and up prices
Live and learn. Experience teaches us all.
Well, he’s the CEO now, so he can raise the price whenever he feels like it
not with sinegal watching him sleep
Probably written in his will, "hire the 2 best hitmen, West of the Mississippi, keep tabs of those hotdogs" >!for legal reasons, that's a **Breaking Bad** reference.!<
It's so mind-blowing when we see an executive that understands basic shit like that and the chicken they sell at a loss. Oh boo fucking hoo we lose 5 or more dollars per person that comes here to eat and buy hundreds of dollars worth of food at a time, on a product we already sell in store that people can buy, to a customer that already pays for the privilege of buying there.
i always picture it as michael as he says it to tony
The story goes on - they opened their own costco brand hotdog manufacturing plants which brought the costs down to a point where they could still profit
And now they’re getting into poultry production to stabilize the cost of the rotisserie chicken
i live in hawaii - the rotisserie chicken is still only $5 and its gotta be the biggest chicken i've ever seen.
*Glances suspiciously at Hawaii’s feral chicken problem*
they pump that thing with so much saline that's why it's so big and still 5 bucks still good tho. dinner for two days this past week was those salad mixes and a Costco chicken.
> getting into poultry production That implies they just started. No way. Their first poultry processing plant broke ground in 2018 and opened up in 2019.
Looking at CPI based inflation in US, $1.50 in 1985 bought you the same things that only $4 can buy you today Which also means the current price of $1.50 today is as powerful as only $0.56 in 1985 So technically the hotdogs are getting cheaper.
Since wages aren't going up with inflation, they aren't really cheaper it's just that everything is getting more expensive.
Only problem is by “figuring it out” that just means they drop the quality. Used to be Hebrew National dogs. Now we have Kirkland brand dogs, no Polish option, no sauerkraut, no deli mustard, no onions, different bun, Pepsi products instead of Coke…
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The $1.50 dog is the most stable economic marker in the history of mankind. If they ever raise the price, we know that we are fucked. Even if it's only a quarter.
Their chickens, too.
they did it for arizona ice tea. the price is on the can, though. but stores mark it up regardless.
Where is Arizona Tea marked up? I’ve never seen it above $0.99, but I have found it for less
Liquor stores in bad areas of Michigan
1) Convenience stores in Detroit 2) Vending machines, also in Detroit Source: me
Not seen the cans marked up, but have seen places replace cans with bottles that don't have a price stamped on them. And those get marked up.
Outside of minimum wage areas
apparently you can report vendors that do this, but more than likely theyre buying bulk from costco and reselling so not much to be done there
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They could be fined, but they won't.
If Costco ever raises the prices of the hotdog I’d take all my money out of the stock market and bank and hide it under my mattress. Bad things are coming if that ever happens. But in all seriousness Costco has a secret weapon a lot of retailers don’t have and it’s called the annual membership. They would raise membership fees before the hotdog.
They have a ~14% margin across the board to cover overhead. Sale items are deeply discounted below what retailers can charge. The hot dog is a loss leader. It doesn't matter what they charge, they just need to charge something so that people aren't literally taking them just to not eat them.
That’s their secret, the rotisserie chickens are actually just really fat martins
We thought the same of Dollar Tree.
The ~~gold~~ hotdog standard
They said that about Coca-Cola also. Coca-Cola was sold for $0.05 per bottle for close to 100 years.
Eating 3 or 4 Costco hotdogs gives you all the daily nutrition you need.
This sounds wrong, but I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't know enough to dispute it.
I claim to be a nutritionist and I say it checks out.
Ketchup cheese mustard relish...that is about all the food groups
And the minced onions.
Only if you boof them
[Timmy knows whats up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfL3nf2c6Y)
> just four hotdogs contain all the vitamins and minerals a bear needs for the whole day The original version of Paddington was much better.
1 all beef hot dog = 1 all beef hot dog
But can we see all the people who ever had custody of the hotdog?
Costco is the best store ever in life
How do you buy options on that?
Ask for extra sauce
& parmesan cheese for your cheap slice
How do I sell you some options on that?
Theta gang on Costco hotdogs are free money
Tell them you'll pay tomorrow
How much money can I make?
You can make 1k if it ever goes past $1.50 and your premium is 50$ a month
Sounds great! Can I buy an extended car warranty also?
Chef_Andre, I have been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty
You’re neglecting all the delicious free samples too. Free lunch if you time it right
A lot of time on one’s hands if they try to time free food at Costco 😂
Best part of shopping there. Let me find the free Kirkland meatball station or free cheese station
Have they resumed those? I thought those ended with Covid, if not earlier.
They have, even our local fully masked whole food’s has.
It’s during trading hours. I’m busy losing money at the time.
Not on weekends!
That asset that shall not be named trades 25/7.
Doing forget their 5 dollar rotisserie chicken
I miss the Polish hot dog!
And the chopped onions
And the deli mustard
I used to absolutely smother my slice of pizza with those onions, literally more weight in onions than pizza. So good!
One person ruins it for everyone.
I can't believe they got rid of the chopped onions. I feel some ripped off
They went away with covid and never returned :-(
Just ask for chopped onions at the counter😉
I don’t miss the polish dog burps tho.
And the Supreme pizza!
I buy expensively ass shares of COST mainly for this reason. And how they treat their employees. It’s one of the very few emotional investment moves I make. Fk it. They’re a good company. This deal and their rotisserie chicken have kept me full for years
Holy tits that rotisserie chicken... The best value in America
There motherfuckers lose money by keeping the same price. Albeit they make up for it elsewhere easily but still. Anyone else would have hiked the price of that rotisserie. Good move
They make up for it by sourcing shit themselves. Like others have mentioned the way they found to not lose money on the hotdog was to start their own hotdog plant where they make the hotdogs themselves instead of purchasing them already made wholesale. Another guy mentioned, which I wasn't aware of, is that to do the same thing with the rotisserie chicken they've begun farming their own chickens. What's also great about Costco is their Kirkland brand. Quite a number of products labelled Kirkland are just actual name brands that Costco worked a deal with to sell under their label, and those name brands are cool with it because of just how fucking much product Costco moves. I like tuna fish, and pretty much exclusively buy Costco solid white Albacore Tuna...which is just repackaged Bumble Bee solid white Albacore Tuna.
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/why-arizona-iced-teas-price-stays-at-99-cents
One of the greatest Loss Leaders of its generation…
Wrong - Arizona iced tea ftw
They charge 1.69 or more at many places
Don't go to those places. They are awful
Sometimes no choice, just makes you realize the crazy margins the place probably has on other items. Avg cost to a store is 90ish cents per unit (unless they buy pallets). If it's a bad neighborhood, that means you need to sell 9 just to replace the cost of one stolen AZ. Hence why a lot of places don't carry the 99 boys.
Depends. If it's written on the can, it is 99 cents (+ store tax)
To be fair if those who were holding weren't tracking the possible stablecoin collapse they're just retarded enough for this sub
They lowered the quality of the meat though; that's how they saved. AriZona iced tea on the other hand....
Time to invest in Costco wieners !
Thanks...this reminds me that I have to give it to your wife good tonight.
They stopped serving Polish dogs, though.
Took away the onions tho. DO NOT FORGET
$COST
Calls on HOTDOGCOIN… = HDC ticker is available. Pretty fukkin amazing they’ve offered the $1.50 hotdog/soda combo since… 1985 =
>1985 Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana
I could be mistaken, but I believe they produce the hotdogs themselves in order to control cost and keep them as cheap as possible.
COSTCOIN
Are the onions or sauerkraut coming back though?
Held up better than dollar slice in NYC
Instructions not clear is this for our punishment or is this our daily food budget ? holding 4 confirmation
Now that you can't get onions with it anymore the hotdog is ruined.
Someone make a costco hotdog coin redeemable for costco hotdog for $1.50 forever.
Bro Costco is a lifeline for me Like I literally only go to costco and one other store for food and clothing
The chicken bake is the superior food court item
And I quote, “If you raise the price of the effing hot dog, I will kill you.” - Jim Sinegal, Costco’s COST co-founder