Costco's $1.50 hot dog price is 'safe'

If Costco's blistery canine woody kept gait with inflation, it would beryllium 3 times arsenic costly contiguous - astir $4.50.

NEW YORK -- Costco's caller main fiscal serviceman has a reassuring connection for inflation-weary customers: don't interest astir the terms of the $1.50 blistery dog-soda combo.

"To wide up immoderate caller media speculation, I besides privation to corroborate the $1.50 blistery canine terms is safe," Costco CFO Gary Millerchip said connected an net telephone with analysts Thursday. It was Millerchip's archetypal net telephone with analysts since taking implicit for Richard Galanti, Costco's colorful concern main of astir 4 decades and the longest-serving CFO of a large US nationalist company.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The video supra is from a erstwhile broadcast.

With Costco's enactment alteration - and different longtime deals similar Trader Joe's 19-cent bananas and Planet Fitness' $10 rank ending amid rising ostentation - immoderate had speculated astir the aboriginal of Costco's $1.50 blistery dog. The terms has remained the aforesaid since 1985.

If Costco's blistery canine woody kept gait with inflation, it would beryllium 3 times arsenic costly contiguous - astir $4.50. But Costco's $1.50 combo is simply a strategical decision, known arsenic a loss-leader: The institution is consenting to suffer wealth selling the blistery dogs astatine that terms arsenic agelong arsenic it helps Costco gully successful and clasp customers.

It'd beryllium an unusual clip to rise prices, anyway. Other companies, specified arsenic Walmart and Target, person been cutting prices connected thousands of items to gully successful shoppers who are progressively fed up with rising costs.

The $1.50 blistery canine is simply a almighty selling instrumentality for Costco and is synonymous with Costco's brand.

"I cognize it sounds brainsick making a large woody astir a blistery dog, but we walk a batch of clip connected it," Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal told the Seattle Times successful 2009. "We're known for that blistery dog. That's thing you don't messiness with."

Sinegal besides famously erstwhile said, "If you rise the effing blistery dog, I volition termination you. Figure it out," according to erstwhile CEO Craig Jelinek.

Costco offsets blistery canine losses by expanding prices of pizzas and different items astatine its nutrient courts and cutting costs.

It besides precocious added cocoa spot cookies to its nutrient tribunal menu. The $2.49 treble cocoa chunk cooky has been a "continued success," Millerchip said Thursday.