I was a big fan of the previous fruit smoothie, and would sometimes stop at Costco just for that if I was already in the area shopping, or had a rough day and wanted a pick me up. Recently had a rough day and went to Costco on my lunch break. I noticed they didn’t have the fruit smoothie anymore and instead had a new strawberry banana one. I was a bit disappointed, but I was there so I ordered it anyway. I didn’t finish it and offered the rest to a coworker once I got back to work. I had one sip and it was just too sweet, in a bad way. I looked it up and apparently it has more servings of fruit, but somehow it tastes extremely artificial. If I end up at McDonalds I will sometimes order their strawberry banana smoothie, and this was similar, but somehow much worse? I’m not sure if I was just expecting better and it was so disappointing that maybe I didn’t give it a chance, but I will not be ordering it again. Just letting you all know in case you get curious. I enjoy the food and the prices are great, but I don’t think I’ll be going there as a treat anymore. Will probably just limit it to when I happen to get hungry while shopping there. Unfortunate, because I would probably make a special trip basically just for the smoothie about once a month. I know it’s not enough to single-handedly keep it on the menu, but still.
Their new cookie is a miss too, just tastes meh. Not worth the calories.
Between the food court quality going down, constant vendor harassment, and app enshitification, we are reconsidering our renewal in May.
Sorry to hear about the cookie, but honestly I hadn’t bothered to order it because it looks like it wouldn’t be worth the calories.
What do you mean by vendor harassment?
The actual food has been pretty consistent around here, and I don’t use the app, so I can’t really opine on that, but I’m surprised to see people reconsidering renewal. At the very least, the pricing and variety of products has been consistently good. Around me, a single serving of any fruit/vegetable is like half of what Costco is charging for a family serving. I can buy 5 celery sticks for x at my local or 40 celery sticks for 2x at Costco. I don’t necessarily need 40, but even if I just need 20, our Costco membership makes sense for that alone.
Not the OP, but I imagine “vendor harassment” means people hawking gutters, phone services, and other 3rd party people/items inside Costco.
I, too, have considered not renewing because I feel like the quality of products has gone way, way down. For me the issue is mostly heat-and-eat food but I’ve also been dissatisfied with some household items – plastic laundry baskets that broke too quickly, for example. For food stuffs, I posted a while back on bake-at-home pre-made pizzas with bad crusts and bad toppings. I miss the old mesquite chicken wings that were replaced with garlic wings that have the mildly chemical flavor of jarred pre-chopped garlic. At the food court, I understood them getting rid of fresh onions for hot dogs during covid, but I didn’t understand why they got rid of the sauerkraut. I stopped buying anything from the food court once that happened.
Also, they keep removing my core purchases; particularly cheeses. They used to stock a triple creme brie-like round that I loved. It is gone. I miss it. The remaining soft cheeses do not compare. That was a bit of a luxury, so I didn’t NEED that, whereas my biggest problem was the removal of 2lb bricks of cheddar cheese. I’m not talking about the fancy cheddar like kerrygold (which doesn’t melt well), but the generic ‘commodity’ cheddar that had been stocked in the main cold cases near bacon, hot dogs, and bags of shredded cheeses. I don’t want shredded cheese. I want a big block I can slice or shred myself as needed. They also used to carry a locally made cheese/horseradish spread I liked buying with local pretzel sticks but both of those are gone, too. There were other similar items but you get the idea.
As for produce, I live near farm country so I can usually find plain produce in season for a better price than Costco if it is local. Produce from other countries can be cheaper at Costco some of the time, but very often our local bulk-produce outlets can beat Costco on price at the cost of a reduction in freshness. Where you have the choice of 5 celery sticks for x or 40 celery sticks for 2x, my choices are: 1 head of celery for x (regular grocer), 3 heads of ‘ugly’ celery for 2x (bulk produce outlet), 3 trimmed heads of celery ‘hearts’ for 2x+ (Costco). I get the ugly celery and put the leaves in whatever celery-using soups/stews I make in the next few weeks. I find those leaves add a pleasing flavor in such dishes, so I feel ripped off if I only receive ‘hearts’.
