Costco’s rotisserie chickens are a cult favorite: The cooked chickens have been selling for $4.99 for years, making them the member-only chain’s highlight product, meaning customers will come in to buy the chicken, but they’ll also likely buy something more expensive, like a toddler-sized piece of cheese or maybe a coffin.
So it’s no surprise that any attempt to ruin this beloved item provokes strong emotions. Such is the bond between Costco shoppers and their skewered dinner highlights. In May, the company announced it was changing its packaging, not its price: It was switching from domed, hard-plastic clamshell cases to plastic bags.
Now, with the planned packaging changes making their way to most stores, people are voicing their understandable frustrations on social media, aka the world’s most popular customer service counter. “Not a fan,” said one Reddit user, raising concerns about potential leaks and the inconvenience of storing them at home. “The corners ripped,” lamented another. People have cited increased labor for Costco employees, claiming it now takes two people to pack a bag (one to keep the bag open).
A TikTok user who calls himself “Costco Sage” (and boasts about correctly predicting Costco’s membership requirement for food court dining and the demise of the chain’s Polish hot dogs) is one of the most vocal anti-bag voices online. In one video posted last month, he is seen bringing his own traditional plastic containers and transferring chicken from a bag, creating a mess in the chicken section and chaos at the register.
Another TikTok user pointed out holes in the top of the bags that were supposedly designed to let steam escape, saying they would leak if the product rolled “a certain way.” Others complained that the design meant their birds got soaked.
The company detailed the benefits of the packaging change in the June issue of its in-house magazine, Costco Connections (yes, this is a real story; Jessica Simpson was on the cover that month). The company claims that the bags will save 17 million pounds of plastic each year. And there’s another, less obvious benefit: “The bags also take up less space for shipping. One pallet of the new bags is equivalent to five pallets of old packaging, which will allow Costco to take 1,000 cargo trucks off the road each year,” the company said. That translates to a reduction of 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, Costco claimed.
Plastic bags also seem to be cheap: Online restaurant supplies supplier WebstaurantStore sells a box of 200 plastic containers for $89.99 and a box of 250 rotisserie bags for $78.99.
And plastic bags are already incredibly common in the world of rotisserie chicken. When The Washington Post tasted chicken from 11 grocery brands in 2023, at least seven of them came in bags similar to the one Costco now uses, rather than hard plastic. That included chicken from Whole Foods, Giant, Wegmans, Food Lion, Sprouts, Safeway and Walmart. (In our tests, Costco’s rotisserie chicken came in a disappointing seventh place, with one taster calling it “nondescript but solid,” but its hefty size and low price made it the best deal.)
While some have loudly lamented the change, others have urged Costco fans to be grateful that prices are staying the same: “If they can maintain the price and relative quality of the products and sacrifice packaging, then I’m OK with it,” one fan wrote on Reddit.
Will Costco change course in the wake of the backlash? It seems unlikely. But the self-proclaimed “Oracle” posted another video on Sunday, showing rows of Costco chicken packed in their old clamshell containers. “The boxes are back,” he said three times. “Yay!”
Another Reddit user found the whole feather spectacle hilarious. “This bag is controversial but it’s so much fun watching the dialogue on both sides in this sub,” they wrote. “This is more entertaining than TV.”
