Costco offers the rotisserie chicken for about $7 bucks.
They call this a loss leader, a product used to bring people into the store to buy other more profitable products. It’s a marketing technique as old as time. Do you buy the Costco chicken?
$7? It's been $4.99 since 2009. They increased the price slightly, during the height of the energy crisis, and rolled it back to $4.99.
A few years back, Costco took complete control of the process from soup to nuts. Instead of sourcing its chicken from Tyson Foods, Costco opened its own Nebraska-based poultry farm, Lincoln Premium Poultry. Costco invested $450 million giving Costco complete control over its chicken prices. Even when they lost 500K birds to bird flu, they were able to weather it.
It is rumored that they used to lose $40M per year, but that was turned around after they started Lincoln Premium Poultry, and as a loss leader, it pays off handsomely for the company. Most retailers use one or more loss leader items. Costco is more effective than most if not all.
I was recently at a relative's house in Paris, and saw a "Kirkland" rotisserie chicken. They're hooked on it, they have a couple of Costco stores not too far from their location. It's 5.99 Euros. The French bird looked to be about 1/3rd the size of the US bird.
i can buy a whole chicken at costco, or for the same price, i can get one chicken sandwich at a restaurant for the same price. hmmmm i think i will take the whole chicken. twice a week. LOL
