After seeing other people doing the same thing with other foods more recently, I am convinced this Reddit hot dog is just the same picture every single update.
I still don’t get people raving about a $1.50 hotdog at a grocery store chain that requires a subscription to get in. Their business model is making you think you’re saving money, not actually saving you money.
We have the $120 annual membership.
What we save on dog food in the first four months of the year pays for that membership. And the store brand dog food is manufactured for Costco by Diamond, so it’s better quality than anything available at Walmart for less.
Household goods, TP, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, etc, etc are a significant savings if you have space to store them.
Some of the deals on groceries, meat, frozen goods and so forth are significant if you have a deep freeze or extra fridge in the garage to keep everything in.
It’s more than a grocery store though. Appliances, furnishings, electronics, gas, tires, and more can be had at decent prices. For instance, I can get a name brand car battery from Costco at the same cost as Auto Zone’s no name special.
As others have said, the annual cash back reward is at least $120.
But…
You have to set a budget, have extra space, and be disciplined about shopping there. Stay out of the central impulse zone in the store unless there’s something you need there, and comparison shop on major purchases. It’s great for people stuck in the suburbs. For everyone else, YMMV.
As far as the hot dog goes… It’s just a meme, man. Relax.
I mean, if you never go, sure. But it’s $65 a year. You can easily save that much in a couple of trips compared to if you bought the food somewhere else.
my membership is $120 and I get back, on average, $120 in the refund cheque every year
I told the lady asking me about my membership that I lost last year’s refund cheque, so they went out of their way to mail me all of those cheques. I didn’t ask for it - they just enough it up and then said “hey we see you didn’t spend the three years before that either, do you want those too?”
are some things more expensive? of course, just like anywhere. but the things I buy and some of the ‘exclusive’ products make it work it for me
fuck it’s worth it for dog food alone tbh, and my dogs are only 65lb combined. but my other favourites from there are bread, some of the meat & fish, frozen goods, and household disposables. far better pricing than Loblaws. and ofc I still aim for buying Canadian
If the sole reason you have a Costco membership is for the hotdogs, then I would agree, but for the vast majority of people the reason they shop at Costco is to buy items in bulk and save money compared to buying the same amount at the local chain grocery store.
It’s not even because the hotdog itself is particularly good. It’s your standard beef frankfurter and a fountain soda. There’s no magic with the item from a culinary standpoint. It’s the fact that they still haven’t raised the price on it when they almost certainly could have done so silently a long time ago and nobody would have noticed or cared. It’s the one act of upper management bothering to think about their customers for a change rather than just gouging every single cent they can get out of their members because some math formula told them that it was possible.
The costco down the street from me has their food court outside and does not need the membership to purchase from. You also don’t need a membership to get gas (though you don’t get the discount which is the only real reason to use a costco gas station and wait half an hour to fill up because of how packed it is).
I’m not sure if it’s like that everywhere, but my costco doens’t need membership to access the restaurant area. Not that I disagree that the subscription carries a good chunk of costco’s revenue.
The sad thing is that they have like no condiments now. At least at mine they only offer ketchup and mustered. I remember loading up on onions, cheese, relish and all kinds of stuff. Its sad that I passed on it the other day.
ikea too
Literally on my top 3 reasons to have a Costco membership. Anyone looking out for my dog prices is a friend of mine.
Unfortunately it’s a fungible token.
And it’s $1.50 in both the US and Canada! I never really paid attention and figured it would have the exchange but nope. I actually looked last week when I was there and it was $1.50.
It seems they offer it for €1.50 in Europe, too!
Never knew we had Costco in Europe
I know there are two outside Paris. We took my wife’s parents back to her dad’s hometown this summer and because I don’t feel comfortable with driving 5 hours to the west coast after flying overnight from North America we usually try to find a place to stay near Paris. We discovered our hotel would be about a half-hour’s drive from the Costco southwest of Paris and we joked about driving there after checking in so we could troll friends and family on social media that our first meal in France was a €1.50 Costco hot dog. I would be genuinely curious to check it out sometime if we ever had the time, just to see what’s the same and what’s different.
That’s awesome, quite committed to a universal 1.50 hotdog. That’s the unity we’re gonna get these days I guess.
The real force holding these values together
They’ve still managed to chip away at it a little. It used to be that you could pick a regular hot dog or a polish sausage for the same price, but the latter is gone now. They also used the pandemic as an excuse to get rid of the sauerkraut, and now I think even the onions are gone.
Also during the pandemic, the local Costco Business Center just demolished their cafe entirely.
You can still get onions at my Costco, you just have to ask at the counter. Never seen the polish though, and now I feel nostalgic for something I’ve never had…
weird, up here we still have $1.50 beef or polish sausage
At least at my Costco we never had sauerkraut. We had the onion dispenser thing before COVID. Now if you ask, they give you onions.
Sauerkraut is one of the reasons I enjoy Sam’s dogs more.
I bet it did, but you just didn’t know it. It was always a thing you had to ask for, and they’d give it to you from behind the counter.
You can still get a polish burpfest in Canada
I can’t prove it but I think the Kirkland paper towels quality has gone down too.
And they aren’t nearly as good as the sauerkraut and onions were.
Still good, but sad that it’s Coke now.
TIL there are people who prefer Pepsi. I literally avoid places that serve Pepsi, but I respect your right to live so perplexingly.
For me it’s Pepsi Max
perpepsingly
My dad prefers pepsi and is reasoning is sound.
It’s less sweet and pairs better with lemon, which he adds to his pepsi. It’s less carbonated.
I prefer coke. Extra fizzy. No lemon. Perhaps vanilla 😋
Flavor is an opinion, but Pepsi is objectively sweeter than coke. It was a whole debacle with the Pepsi challenge.
Definitely! I’ve got an odd ranking system for my pop preferences. I prefer regular Pepsi to regular Coke, Diet Coke to Diet Pepsi, but Coke Zero is the GOAT and ranks top of everything. Pepsi Zero is bottom of the barrel for me.
I have always found Pepsi sweeter than Coke
Two extra grams of sugar. Both have a ton of sugar for sure.
Pepsi is WAY sweeter than Coke.
Like, incomparably so… which is really saying something because coke tastes like a big spoon full of sugar with some corn syrup and a food coloring chaser.
The stuff made in Mexico with cane sugar is still good, and better for cooking. Pepsi is much sweeter and I enjoyed it when they had the throwback version made with sugar but no thanks on the HFCS
I like coke more as well but here in Europe it doesn’t have corn syrup so
No no no I prefer slightly more evil corporations.
I’m mad that there’s no sugar free option without caffeine. The new lemonade is full sugar sadly.
no sugar free option without caffeine.
That’s called “water”.
You can get a caffeine free coke zero and diet coke tho
Woosh
poor people’s coke
Blame Pepsi.
