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Ben Franklin famously said the only certain things in life are death and taxes, but I’d argue you could also add “A hot dog and a soda costing $1.50 at Costco” to that list. However, that may not actually be the case based on what the company’s outgoing CFO recently had to say.
There are plenty of reasons Costco has managed to attract a devoted following courtesy of customers who are lured into its warehouse store by the promise of the discounts that come with buying in bulk, its massive $5 rotisserie chickens, and, of course, the iconic hot dog combo that will set you back just $1.50 at the food court.
That was the price you had to pay for a hot dog when Costco first started selling them in the 1980s, and the chain has famously declined to increase that total over the decades even as it began to sell them at a loss.
At least one executive approached former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal about a potential price hike but quickly learned it was not on the table when the head honcho told them, “If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you.”
Sinegal stepped down from that position in 2011, but the suits who picked up where he left off have declined to tinker with the hot dog in his absence.
That includes Richard Galanti, who has served as the CFO of Costco since 1985. He’ll be wrapping up that lengthy run at the end of the week, and he decided to sit down with Bloomberg for an interview where he looked back at his career and—more importantly—shed some light on the future of the hot dog combo.
During the conversation, Galanti fielded a question about the fate of the $1.50 price tag in his absence and stated “It’s probably safe for a while,” which isn’t a cause for immediate concern but still a somewhat worrying response when you consider it leaves the door open for an increase that was previously inconceivable.
At the end of the day, Costco generates close to $250 billion in revenue on an annual basis, and it’s hard to imagine a world where the hot dogs put a big enough dent in their profits to justify tweaking the price—a change that should probably be viewed as the first sign of the apocalypse if it does end up coming to fruition.