Costco’s anti-inflation hot dog deal celebrates 40th anniversary
Costco sold more than 245 million hot dog combos in 2025, setting a new record.
Content creator Joey Kinsley has accomplished his fair share of courage-shattering feats.
He ate chili peppers every hour for 24 hours and once ate nothing but potato chips for 48 hours. None of these stunts were as viral as when Kinsley ate nothing but Costco hot dogs for seven days in a row.
How much does it cost to eat 29 hot dogs slathered in ketchup, mustard, relish and washed down with Pepsi or Mountain Dew? $43.50 (plus membership fee) and some “extreme indigestion.” Pepto-Bismol and Tamms each sent him care packages.
“I always say in my videos, ‘Please don’t do this at home,'” said Kinsley, who is affectionately known as Sir Yacht. “But it definitely inspired my YouTube career.”
McDonald’s has the golden arches, Nike has the Swoosh, and Walt Disney has the castle: these are iconic symbols of status in American life.
Costco has a sale on hot dogs and sodas for $1.50. And this combo has never been more popular than it is as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. Costco sold more than 245 million hot dog combos in 2025, setting a new record.
For good reason. In a world seemingly overflowing with raw bargains, a hot dog and soda at Costco costs about the same as several servings of affordable homemade beans and rice.
What other meals could you make with the change you scraped from your couch cushions? One YouTuber called it “the best deal on the planet.”
For Kinsley, whose stunt involves traveling to all 50 state capitals in 30 days, there’s no better food deal than Costco. He spent more money on gas to get to the nearest warehouse than he did on the most popular item at Costco’s food court.
Costco’s inflation-busting combo
What makes this combo truly unique? Costco has been touting its food court franks for years, but hasn’t raised prices since the 1980s, even though inflation has driven up the median price of grab-and-go meals.
A hamburger costs $14.53, up 3.2% from a year ago, according to Toast’s October Menu Price Monitor, which tracks restaurant price increases due to inflation. Burritos rose 3.3% to $13.43.
If Costco’s hot dog and soda combo kept pace with inflation, that $1.50 deal would now cost $4.62, more than triple the price. That’s still a relative bargain, except for Arizona’s 99-cent can of iced tea, which has been priced at less than $1 since its inception in 1992. Even Trader Joe’s 19-cent bananas weren’t immune to market pressure.
Analysts say the aroma of hot dogs that wafts up every day from the warehouse’s food court is a constant reminder of Costco’s commitment to providing value at a time when U.S. shoppers are tired of nosebleeding prices and constant markdowns.
Some shoppers hold or bite into hot dogs and pose for photos of their Costco membership cards.
“This has now become an icon of Costco,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail.
“At Costco, people feel like they’ve won.”
It may seem counterintuitive, but hot dog combo deals are a smart move for Costco’s bean section. You can almost see profit margins expanding when shoppers with carts full of purchases come to the food court to enjoy a happy meal at a great price.
Business news site Morning Brew and YouTuber Phil Andrews of Maximomics estimate that Costco members spend about $1.75 per minute shopping in the warehouse. Market research firm Kantar estimates that Costco sells $530,000 every minute in the United States.
Rachel Dalton, director of retail insights at Kantar, said this is how Costco’s sausages are made. Hot dog deals encourage loyalty, and that loyalty is measured in membership fees. Costco collected about $270 million in these fees last year. According to Kantar data, 95% of Costco members plan to renew their membership.
“The combo price of $1.50 is almost unbelievable,” says Dalton. It tells shoppers, “Costco listens to me.”
Newport Beach, California, Film director Nate Ford has been shopping at Costco since he was a toddler, carting around toilet paper and eggs. When he was growing up in San Diego, his father was a big fan of the foot-long, all-beef sausages wrapped in fluffy bread that wouldn’t rise, and would often buy them for himself and his German shepherd..
The combo deals got my dad so excited that he would sometimes buy 10 combo deals at a time. That means Ford will have to carry 10 fizzling cups of lemonade on his drive home.
“People feel like they’re getting a good deal because they get great deals at Costco,” he said.
Hot dog fans from Michael Penix Jr. to Julia Child
Popular with baby boomers as much as the TikTok generation, Costco’s combos have become something of a myth.
Michael Penix Jr. told reporters he was standing in line to buy a hot dog at Costco when he found out he got the starting quarterback job with the Atlanta Falcons.
Professional wrestler Mark Henry made headlines when he switched to Costco hot dogs. According to her biography, none other than Julia Child would always stop at the food court at the end of a Costco shopping trip and enjoy it just as much as eating fancy French food.
Ryan Reynolds also got in on the action, appearing alongside Richard Galanti in a tongue-in-cheek campaign to name the former Costco executive as Mint Mobile’s honorary “anti-inflation officer.”
“This is the guy who looked inflation in the face and said, ‘I’m not going to eat a hot dog,'” Reynolds deadpans in the ad.
Some fans even have hot dog tattoos. Tom Solakoff worked in a Costco food court as a teenager before taking a job in graphic design in Toronto, and has such fond memories of those days that he has a hot dog and soda contract carved into his right arm.
“It’s iconic,” said AJ Behumo, one of the “Costco guys” with his 12-year-old son Eric (also known as Big Justice).
The father-son duo from Boca Raton, Florida, became a TikTok sensation a few years ago after uploading videos of their antics at Costco. Eric dances with a Premio sausage and AJ weightlifts two jugs of milk.
They’ve amassed 2.8 million followers, rating everything from double chocolate chunk cookies to chicken bakes (another popular internet hack: stuffing a hot dog inside a chicken bake) on the Boommeter. The hot dog and soda combo deal earned a perfect five booms.
What’s more American than a hot dog? It’s an epic deal when it comes to hot dogs, Befumo said.
“In this day and age where everything is so expensive, it’s nostalgic to be able to buy a hot dog of that size and quality for $1.50 with a soft drink,” he said. “A hot dog cost $1.50 20 years ago; it’s $1.50 now.”
From humble beginnings to top dog
Costco’s efforts to combat inflation began in 1985 with a hot dog cart outside a warehouse in Portland, Oregon.
Then-general manager Joe Portella allowed a vendor nicknamed “Warm Wonderful Gene” to set up shop there without first getting permission from Costco. Headquarters executives liked the idea and decided to not only leave it alone but expand on it, David and Susan Schwartz said.
The husband-and-wife team chronicled the history of Costco’s hot dogs in “The Joy of Costco: A to Treasure Hunt from A to Z.” They self-published the book in 2023 under the name Hot Dog Press, in honor of Susan’s late father, who was passionate about hot dogs, and the importance of the $1.50 hot dog deal to Costco’s success.
In fact, it was so important that Costco’s food court was originally called Café 150, after the low prices of its hot dog combos.
Sometimes the fate of that price depended on it.
W. Craig Jelinek, who later became Costco’s CEO, recalled that at a business lunch in 2018, he suggested to his then-boss, Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal, that he raise prices because “we were losing our butts.” “He said, ‘If you let me eat hot dogs, I’ll kill you. Do something.'”
Jelinek understood that. In 2008, Costco switched from Hebrew National, which had been raising prices, and began making its own hot dogs at a factory in California and then at another factory in Illinois.
“We’re keeping it at $1.50 and making enough money to make a fair profit,” Jelinek said in a 2018 interview.
“What’s Costco without $1.50 hot dogs?”
Costco has been tinkering with its drinks and condiments over the years to maintain its prices. This summer, the company switched from Pepsi to Coke as a further cost-cutting measure.
“A lot of people think it’s a loss leader, but that’s not the case,” David Schwartz said.
A loss leader is a product that is sold below market price to attract customers and induce them to purchase a more expensive product.
“They’re not making a lot of money doing it, but they’re still making money,” he said.
If anyone knows, it’s the Schwartzes. He rarely had access to Costco bookshelves while writing the book. They’re also the ultimate Costco hot dog fans. In fact, I first met Sinegal over hot dogs in 2018.
They also sampled hot dogs fresh off the assembly line in Chicago, visited 350 Costco warehouses around the world, and sampled hot dogs with fried crispy onions in Iceland and pickled jalapeños in Mexico.
They are still amazed at the popularity of Costco hot dogs in Japan. There is a Costco next to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp baseball team’s game venue, so fans can buy hot dogs or grilled takoyaki during the game.
But can Costco’s combo stay at the $1.50 line forever? Count on us, say the Schwartzes.
“I don’t think it’s going to change at all,” David Schwartz said. “They’ll do whatever they can to keep the price at $1.50 for as long as the company exists.
“It’s a really great facility. What’s Costco without a $1.50 hot dog?”
