Does anyone else get suspicious on sighting one of those huge costco roast chickens.

Loss leader. Come for the chicken and buy 480 rolls of paper towels.

BTW.. I love Costco pizza.

Edit :: I thought I would toss in a Costco story. When I worked at the theater I went to the dentist and found out a ton (2K) of work had to be done. It was Christmas time so it was easy to get a job at Costco. So I took a few months off from the theater to push carts at Costco. I got dental a few days after starting and got my teeth fixed. It is a great place to work.

Another good deal is at the food court – hot dog and soda for a buck fifty.

Another thing about their generic Costco Kirkland brand toilet paper – the rolls are not getting narrower like the expensive brands of toilet paper that you see on your supermarket shelf. Don’t get me started on Costco. I love Costco.

Many people don’t realize that Costco pays their employees more than the minimum wage, which is what most retailers pay their employees nowadays.

I could go on…..

Nope, but then I rarely buy groceries at Costco or Sam’s Club. Whah the heck do I need with a 5-lb. jar of creamed herring or a 50-count bag of apples? Now huge bags of PEANUTS… that’s a different story.

Someone told me recently that meats and fruits tend to be fresher than at the supermarket because these huge wholesalers turn over such large amounts of food so quickly, but I’m not sure I believe that.

But do I know? I’m a bachelor.

I too have heard that Costco is far superior when it comes to treatment of their employees. Folks working there lack the pallor of squalid just below the surface desperation common to the “throwaway” employees at Walmart or Target.

@Pachy: The apples and other large fruit will be in a 4 lb bag but they’ll be big apples or big oranges, so may 9 to 10 pieces of fruit. I get blueberries and raspberries there – approximately 18 oz for around 3 to 4 bucks. The veggies and fruit that need to be chilled are in a cold room – about 50 degrees. Their fruit and vegetables are fresh or nobody would buy them.

Costco also has a very liberal return policy. Anything you buy that you don’t like you can just return, even without a receipt. They have your membership and they look it up.

They also give out a lot of samples of food, and there’s no limit on the number you can eat. I’ll usually not eat more than two from each vendor, but still, you can eat more if you choose.

Keurig cups – I get 100 or 110 K-cups of Kirkland brand dark roast for about 30 bucks, or 80 Paul Newman K-cups (on sale now for 28 bucks), normally about 35 bucks.

I get my eyeglasses, contact lenses and prescriptions filled at Costco. If you need to pay cash for a prescription, their medication prices are also cheaper. Eyeglasses and contacts, ditto. You don’t have to be a member to use the prescription service – a lot of people don’t know that.

My local Costco also has tires and liquor. I don’t buy the liquor too much except maybe at the holidays or if a neighbor asks me to pick something up, but the tires – I’m going next week for 4.

It’s not just large quantities of food or things like toilet paper. They sell appliances, plates, tableware, seasonal stuff like camping gear, bedding, flowers, car stuff, luggage, building materials like Pergo flooring, the list goes on and on. The difference is there’s not a huge choice of each item – there’s maybe 2 or 3 types of luggage for example. There may be two types of coffee maker.

If I need something like paper plates, I get them from Costco. It’s a larger outlay of money but per each, the price is way lower.

Sometimes people tell me they don’t go because they don’t need huge quantities of food. I tell them “you will eventually use 100 garbage bags.” Instead of buying 20 garbage bags for 5 bucks, I will buy 100 garbage bags for 18 bucks.

I know a couple of people making a living wage with benefits working at costco. We buy a lot of stuff in bulk there. We end up just needing to get things that don’t keep very long like vegetables elsewhere.

Here ya go.

76 million Rotisserie chickens in 2014! Holy cackling hens Batman!
That’s hard to wrap your mind around, looking at the 22 hens here that seem like a lot more. haha
Costco may sell a lot of roast chickens but they seem to have some pretty good policies.

I haven’t been in a Costco for about 5 or 6 years now, as a single person I just don’t buy bulk items.

We joined Costco at a place we vacation; for a two or three week stay, we almost pay for our annual membership. Their beef and pork are great in quality and price, we have bought a couple of their rotisserie chickens. ;>)

We also use our membership at home for the beef steaks.

I thought some states had laws against loss leaders. Maybe those laws are gone now? Or, only on certain categories?

@JLeslie: I believe the laws against loss leaders are when a store or car dealer with have an item very cheap but they will just have one of the items or very few, so people come in to buy it and there’s none left.

Costco having the five dollar chicken is just a good bargain, not a loss leader. I think because they buy so many (as stated above), they just get them at an incredible price from their supplier and therefore, pass that bargain on to their customers, as they do with many other items.

@jca The car dealer laws have to do with if it is advertised there must be at least one for sale on the lot that meets the criteria of the ad. We got a really cheap truck that way once. They kept trying to upsell us. Eventually, they brought us the one on the lot. The practice of trying to get someone in to upsell them is “bait and switch.”

Loss leaders are items sold below cost. They are (or were) common in supermarkets. An ad for really cheap soda or milk (I don’t see milk cheap anymore actually) or bread, to draw a customer in, and then they shop for the rest of their groceries. If Costco is still selling the chickens above cost, then it’s not technically a loss leader.

Loss leaders worked well in stores where customers usually buy multiple items. Larger stores can drive small stores out of business with it, which is why some laws were on the books, but I don’t know where the laws stand now.

@canidmajor Thank you for the link. That pretty much answers the question

Article I found today (googling something else) about store cooked chickens:

https://priceonomics.com/are-rotisserie-chickens-a-bargain/