quote:

Some good news for inflation-weary Americans: There will be no price hike on Costco’s hot dogs.

In an interview Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” CEO Craig Jelinek had a one-word answer when asked whether he would raise the signature food court item’s price: “No.”

quote:

The hot dog and soda combo has sold for $1.50 for decades, and was the subject of a Mental Floss article from 2018 that recently began circulating again.

The article recounts a time when Jelinek approached Costco co-founder and former CEO Jim Sinegal. He told him the company was losing money over the iconic food item.

“I came to (Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty,” Jelinek said, according to the Mental Floss article, which cites 425Business. “We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise (the price of the) effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.’ That’s all I really needed.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/1...-of-hot-dogs-no.html

Kirkland hot dogs came in #1 in a Washington Post comparison of hot dogs. I don't know if they paywall articles this far back:

Ranking Hot Dogs

Bottom line was that other dogs might have more pronounced flavors but Kirklands taste like people think hot dogs should taste.

Have never had one because meat.

But boy howdy, I love the cheese pizza!

Friends rave about the Costco dog. Myself, never had one because salt.

Also because on the rare occasion I eat hot dogs, I like them Chicago style, and Costco doesn't have all the necessary condiments to construct a Chicago dog.

I used to get them regularly, but I always opted for the "Polish" because I preferred the taste. They stopped making the Polish ones a couple years ago. Foo. Now I get one if I'm desperately hungry when I get to Costco (you know, "never shop on an empty stomach").

I was also a huge fan of the combo pizza. The cheese one is meh. The pepperoni is too greasy. They stopped making combo pizza a few months into the pandemic -- there was a sausage shortage everywhere.

I do buy the packages of Kirkland brand dogs. I'm the only one in the house that eats them. Mrs pj likes dogs that are more processed and have a more homogeneous texture like the standard Oscar Mayer dog.


For the record, I really don't like Sinai 48 or Nathan's Famous dogs.


There is a place in Vienna Virginia called the Vienna Inn. When I lived there, it was a ramshackle place that appeared to be made from three or four mobile homes pushed together. They had chilidogs for a buck apiece. They were simply an Oscar Mayer all-beef hot dog on a steamed Wonder bun with Hormel no-beans chili, French's mustard, a pump of melted Velveeta, and diced onions. Seems simple enough, like you could make them at home. For reasons I never understood, they were a hundred times better than making the exact same thing at home. Draft Bud was a dollar, too. Regular customers ordered two beers and three chilidogs at the outset... because you might never get the waitress to come back to your table again.

I liked the Costco hot dog and soda better when the dogs were Hebrew National, but that ended in 2009. The Kirkland dogs feel smoother/fattier to me.

Our Costco no longer has sauerkraut or stone ground mustard. Booooo!

I suppose I should go back to Costco for a look. I buy car batteries there but really nothing else.

It’s always crowded, the enormous parking lot is always full and the package sizes make no sense for a household of two. Last I checked ALDIs beat their price on nearly everything. People seem to like their processed/prepackaged stuff but it’s not something I buy. Farm stands sell better produce, BJs offers about the same deal on TP and toothpaste without the hike.

I feel the same about TJ - they put it in a giant shopping mall where you have to park in a structure and walk for blocks. My truck fits in the structure but just barely.

But I’ll check it out again. If they can beat ALDIs chicken deal (giant drumsticks and thighs for 59 cents a pound - perfect for dog mush) they might get back on my list.

Nope, they don't beat your Aldi chicken deal.

I can understand the "too much for a household of two". We are eating much less and have trouble getting through Costco-sized packages of some stuff.

Still, their prices on a lot of items are very good, and their return policy is fabulous.

Some of the things we like or have gotten really good deals on:

Eyeglasses
Tires
Potting mix
Raised garden beds
Margaritas
Snack stuff and cookies
Bottled Coke from Mexico
Cut flowers
Computers
Prepared food items, both the in-house and other brands
Cheese

We are fortunate to have a smaller Costco warehouse five minutes from our house. We go during the week and it's not nearly as crowded as other warehouses in the area. Same for Trader Joe's.

You certainly can get a lot of these things at other places and I can see not fighting the crowds at Costco.

I adore hotdogs, but I don’t like the Costco ones. They are too big, for one. Plus I like my hotdogs slightly charred on a grill. I really liked their polish sausages, but those are no more and they don’t do the saurkraut anymore either. We were at Costco yesterday, one thing we always buy is the big chunks of pecorino Romano, we go through a lot of those (though sadly they have almost doubled in price).