Costco Wholesale’s $1.50 hot-dog-and-soda combo is in no jeopardy of disappearing anytime soon.
Costco’s chief financial officer, Richard Galanti, was asked during a presentation on its fourth-fiscal-quarter results what categories it’s harvesting extra margin on to offset the margin squeeze in other areas, including the noted hot-dog-and-soda combo.
“Lightning just struck me,” he quipped,
“We really don’t look at it that way. I think the thing I mentioned earlier about there [being] some businesses that are doing well with margin, like [the] gas business, [in] a smaller way — in the travel business, those things help us be more aggressive in other areas, or, as you mentioned, hold the price on the hot dog and the soda a little longer — forever.
But at the end of the day, no, I don’t think we necessarily look to find places where we can harvest margin.”
The hot-dog-and-soda combination, is a hallmark for many of a visit to the warehouse retailer, has taken on a life of its own. When inflation started accelerating in May, an executive publicly proclaimed that it was holding the combination constant at the same price in effect since the 1980s.
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