7 Costco Food Items That Aren't Really A Great Deal

Costco is wonderful for its great prices on bulk buys that let you stock up on both essentials and treats. However, some of the products aren't necessarily the best deals for many people. While each Costco item has its place and its intended buyer, a good number of customers will also find that certain shopping habits could be costing them unnecessary dollars.

This is down to a few factors, with the most common issue being that buying too much of a product could lead to it going to waste. Another problem is that some of the items people like to buy at Costco are easily available at non-membership stores for prices that are also pretty good. This particular issue has led more than one customer online to comment on Reddit, wondering why they should even pay Costco membership if they can find the same stuff at, say, Trader Joe's. 

Costco is a fun place to shop with a lot of good-quality products and economical unit prices. But, if you're thinking about buying any of the following items, you might want to give your purchase some more thought to ensure you don't get a less-than-optimal deal.

You can get many cheap meals out of a large hunk of cheese. But if you like to eat cheese cold (meaning you're not going to melt it or add it to another cooked dish), a Costco-sized amount might not be the best deal. If you can't use up all the cheese before its best-before date, you'll either have to throw it out or freeze it. However, in some cases, freezing your cheese means you'll no longer be able to eat it without cooking it because of changes to the cheese's texture.

Soft cheeses, such as brie, might also end up getting thrown out. They last only about a week in the refrigerator once you've opened the package, and they don't freeze well, as when soft cheeses thaw, moisture leaks out, leaving you with a crumbly mess. So, unless you've got big plans to feed soft cheese to a lot of people within the week, you don't want to buy a bulk amount at Costco.

Harder cheeses are much easier to freeze. They can last anywhere from three to four weeks in the refrigerator after opening — always follow the storage times on the packaging — and when they thaw after freezing, they don't end up quite as crumbly as soft cheeses do. But hard cheeses can still undergo some textural changes that can dry them out and make them unpleasant to eat as is. They melt very well and retain their flavor, though, making them handy for cooking.

Sensitive produce that doesn't last long is another item that might not be so great as a Costco buy. Unless you're feeding a lot of people or eating perishable produce like avocados nonstop within a few days of shopping, there's a huge risk that these items will spoil before you get through them all. Besides this, not all produce freezes well, meaning you can't always store it for long periods of time. This is a waste of money that nullifies any savings you might have gotten from shopping at Costco.

What's more, there are numerous complaints online about the general quality of the produce at Costco. Reports on Reddit mention avocados going bad within a day; bags of avocados that seem ripe in the store but all go bad at the same time and can't be used for meal planning; old bagged lettuce that was already turning reddish; and corn on the cob that simply tastes terrible. 

Some commenters noted that Costco produce, like heads of lettuce and romaine hearts (in other words, not the bagged, chopped stuff), actually lasted a good amount of time. So, if you still want a deal on produce, Costco does have items that would be a better buy. You just have to choose wisely.

Depending on the type of oil, the quality, and the storage conditions, opened cooking oil can last anywhere from a few months to two years. Olive oil, for example, often passes its prime about three months after opening (although you can still use it for two to three years after this if it tastes fresh). But this might not be enough time for people to use up all the oil in those huge bottles from Costco, especially if they aren't cooking massive amounts of food. The result? Wasted money, wasted oil, and a huge inconvenience, as now you have to figure out how to safely dispose of a bulk amount of rancid oil.

Large bottles of cooking oil are excellent buys for restaurants, where the cooks are going to use up most of the oil quickly. For use at home, however, a giant bottle of cooking oil usually isn't worth it. The oil can go rancid depending on how well you're able to store the containers. If you don't have a dark, cool place to keep your oil, for example, it could go bad faster than expected. And with some cooking oils costing a pretty penny these days, there's the potential for a comparatively big financial loss.

No doubt there are people out there who can eat an entire jar of Costco Kirkland salsa before it goes bad. But not everyone can do that, and for them, those big jars of tasty salsa could end up being a bad deal and a recipe for food waste. Store-bought salsa can last around two weeks after opening when stored in the refrigerator. If that's not enough time for you to finish it up, you do have options.

You can freeze salsa, so the remainder doesn't have to go in the trash. It doesn't always thaw that well, however, sometimes turning out very watery. If that happens, you can still use it in soups, sauces, and marinades. You may want to freeze salsa in one or two-cup portions so that you can take smaller amounts out of the freezer to use in sauces or as a dip. 

However, bulk-buying Costco salsa is not a great deal if you don't have space to freeze it, or if you just don't like the texture after thawing. If that describes you, then wait for sales on packs of smaller jars (if your local Costco ever has those) or just go to another market.

Long story short: Spices don't expire in a safety sense, but they do gradually lose their potency. They may not look as vibrant, they may not smell as pungent, and they may not have such a strong flavor as they did when the jar was new. But unless your spices have developed mold — rare, but it can happen, especially if the spices get wet — or become contaminated from a damaged container or poor storage, they're generally still safe to use. Whole spices last longer than ground spices, but all spices tend to lose potency in one to four years.

So, why are the giant jars at Costco not a good deal? If it takes you years to get through one of those jars, the spices in them aren't really going to have any fragrance or flavor left by the time you reach the bottom. You'll be using mildly colorful dust after a while. Just because something is safe to use doesn't mean it's going to give you the best results. It's true that some people do keep spices for years because they can still smell and taste enough to justify cooking with them, but a huge bottle from Costco is a lot different from a smaller container from your local market.

Grabbing a 35-pack of soda cans seems like a real deal, except at Costco, it might not be. Numerous commenters on Reddit have compared soda prices at Costco to their local markets — especially when those markets have sales on soda — and found Costco prices per can to be generally higher than elsewhere. You might not be able to walk out with a 35-pack, but if the price of a six-pack at the market is significantly better, does that 35-pack really present the best deal? Some markets even offer buy-one-get-one deals, which can pull the price per can down way past the price at Costco.

But another reason why soda at Costco might not be a good deal is that, if you don't drink all that fizz, it can go flat over time. Yes, even with the cans remaining sealed. And if you store the cans in an environment that becomes too cold, the soda could freeze. Soda expands when frozen, which means the cans can sustain damage and leak when the soda thaws.

Muffins, quickbreads, yeast breads, and similar products freeze and thaw very well, so at first, buying a lot of these from Costco doesn't sound like a bad idea. You'd just store the extra in the freezer, right? The problem is that you need freezer space to do that. If you've just also bulk bought egg rolls, steak, and a lot of ice cream and frozen vegetables, how much room do you actually have left for that container of muffins?

This has long been an issue for Costco customers because, for years, Costco has required people to buy two containers minimum, when purchasing six-packs of giant muffins, as well as other pastries. Scroll through Reddit, and you'll find many complaints about how the pastries go bad too quickly for a person to finish off 12 big muffins. One Reddit user even complained that the muffins only stayed good to eat for a couple of days. 

There is some positive news: In 2024, Costco started changing the muffins so that each one was smaller, and customers only had to buy one package of eight instead of six. But that solves the issue for only one type of bread product, and even then, only if you've got enough people in the home to finish the whole pack before the muffins go stale. If you live alone, you're still going to need to freeze some. And that means you still need the freezer space.