SnogBlogy

We have Costco founder and former CEO Jim Sinegal to thank for the iconic $1.50 hot canine. He would now not let the price cross up.

Costco hot dogs are the meat tubes of legend. The large dogs have always come with a soda and best value $1.50. You'd suppose that the price would have long gone up as the years have long past by. But that hasn't been the case.

And many only recently discovered why. The $1.50 Costco hot canine / soda combo had a champion in Costco founder and former CEO Jim Sinegal. An article on Mental Floss explains that Sinegal stated he would "kill" anyone who tried to elevate the price of the hot dog.

"Absolutely losing my mind over this," they tweeted, together with a pair screenshots from the article. The tweet stocks the hole paragraph of the object, which reads:

"When Costco president W. Craig Jelinek once complained to Costco co-founder and former CEO Jim Sinegal that their monolithic warehouse business was losing money on their famously cheap $1.50 hot dog and soda package, Sinegal listened, nodded, and then did his best to make his take on the situation perfectly clear.

"'If you elevate [the price of] the effing hot canine, I will be able to kill you,' Sinegal stated. 'Figure it out.'" Evidently, Jelinek thought Sinegal was serious, because he has never raised the price of the hot dog. 

It's been the same price since the warehouse chain opened in 1984. In case you're not counting, that's 36 years that you've been able to get a hot dog and a soda at Costco for $1.50. That's quite a deal. There's pretty much no other place where you can get a meal for less than $2 anymore. 

Twitter users loved this unwavering dedication to the $1.50 Costco hot dog from the company's co-founder. The article explains that the way they keep prices so low is by calculating the cost to them and weighing that with the value the hot dogs afford them. 

Would people pay more than $1.50 for a hot dog in 2020? I'm sure they would. But the goodwill and foot traffic generated by keeping the prices so low is actually more valuable to the company. 

"Customers coming in to store at Costco are amused, glad, and fueled through the hot canine meal. If they get it just sooner than leaving the shop, they're left with a long-lasting influence of being treated smartly. That's price greater than maintaining with inflation," the article explains.

But the other thing they've done is figure out how to keep production costs low. When Hebrew National upped their prices, Costco simply moved to in-house hot dog production. Now, they have two hot dog plants, one in Los Angeles and one in Chicago. That, my friend, is what we call dedication to the cause (the cause being the preservation of the $1.50 hot dog...doesn't get much nobler than that). 

Costco sells more than 100 million hot dogs every year, which is apparently "greater than each and every MLB stadium combined." It is smart. You've got thousands of folks stocking up on bulk goodies every weekend; they want a salty, meaty, and refreshing deal with to snack on along the best way. 

Everyone I do know who has a Costco club is very dependable to the retail membership retailer. Part of the cause of this is indubitably that they care about their shoppers sufficient to stay their hot canine costs now not just low, but 1984 low.

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