Are Kirkland Signature Food Products Always Organic? Here's How To Tell

When you're walking around Costco, in between popping free samples into your mouth and trying to maneuver your packed shopping cart around the aisles, you might notice that a disproportionate amount of products are labeled under the Kirkland Signature brand. As it turns out, this doesn't actually mean they were all made by the same manufacturer. Instead, Kirkland Signature is Costco's private brand label, encompassing all sorts of food, drink, home goods, and other products made by name brands or even sometimes smaller companies. Costco negotiates deals with these companies in order to offer bulk items to its customers at lower prices, which is why they're united under one label — but it's important to note that these items are made by all sorts of companies, and they have a lot of differences. One of these differences is that not every Kirkland product is organic.

If you're wondering which ones are and which aren't, there isn't a special aisle or color-coding system, but it's not hard to figure out — any products that are organic will be clearly labeled. And if you're shopping online, it's as easy as filtering by the "organic" keyword. These items will likely be a little more expensive than their non-organic counterparts, but they carry with them the added bonus of knowing your food wasn't produced with synthetic pesticides, and any livestock used to produce your food was raised in somewhat better living conditions.

If you're hoping to get an overview of which products you can buy organic from the Kirkland Signature label, we've got good news and bad news: The bad news is that we can't exactly list each item — but the good news is that's because there are just so many items, spanning from breakfast, to coffee, to spices, to snacks. There will certainly be Kirkland organic meats, breads, and other pantry staples, but other, more niche items might not earn the organic stamp of approval.

There might be one other question on your mind while shopping: Does it even matter if your maple syrup or roasted seaweed is organic? Is buying organic produce really worth the extra cost? The answer, of course, depends on your preferences and will vary item-to-item, but we can testify to the fact that for at least one item, it makes a major difference — there's a reason why Costco's organic olive oil easily topped the list in our ranking. There's no one-size-fits-all rule, though — many of Kirkland Signature's products with the lowest quality ingredients are non-organic, and unfortunately, even the brand's organic lemonade made the list of items to skip.