Does Costco Really Have $2,000 Half Cows In The Freezer Section?

Back when I lived in an apartment complex, I took advantage of the communal barbecues there. While telling a fellow resident about an egregiously neglected grill I had to clean before cooking my food, I said, "It looked like someone cooked half a cow on there." I was joking — or so I thought. But it turns out one can actually buy half a cow at select Costco Business Centers for $1,900. 'Merica! 

That's a full side of beef, bones and all, after initial processing and butchering at 350 to 400 pounds! This raises a lot of questions. Who's buying that much beef at once? How are customers transporting it home? Where are they storing it? Are they and their immediate family eating it all themselves (over the course of a year) or sharing with others? 

It sounds absurd to purchase so much meat at once, but it's a very economical method — saving about 30% to 50%, or $500 to $1,000 compared to buying the same quantity in hundreds of smaller cuts, per calculations done by the Half a Cow Club. However, you have to put in a lot of work to cut and grind all the meat, totaling about 200 to 250 pounds once all bones and trimmings are removed. This averages out to around $7.50 to $9.50 per pound. About 40% of the meat is the type that's sold as ground beef in stores and doesn't make good steaks or roasts, so you have to eat (or share) lots of ground beef for this to make sense. But this kind of savings is why visiting Costco is No. 2 on Chowhound's list of best tips for saving money on beef.

Unfortunately, you can only buy whole sides of beef at Costco Business Centers, and not even all of those have them. You can check Costco's business website to find a location near you, though there are only about 30 nationwide. But if there's one near you, these stores are already included in your Costco membership, and even if you don't want a whole side of beef, many shoppers believe it's better to buy beef at the Costco Business Center anyway. 

But if there's not a Business Center near you, there may be similar ways to buy in bulk and save big, even at a regular Costco warehouse. In 2024, a Reddit user who says they work in the Costco meat department wrote, "Anything you see in the meat department can be bought in bulk as a cryovac," referring to a name brand for vacuum-seal packaging. "You just have to ask someone working in the meat department. It will be in bulk, and will be untrimmed, but will be cheaper per pound." They also shared that you can save even more money per pound buying your chosen cuts of beef by the whole case. Those vary in size based on the type of meat, but if you know the smart way to stretch it, one Costco beef cut can feed your family for weeks.