bfg-9000 wrote:Costco is like Target in that the store manager has wide latitude to stock whatever sells well locally, from lobster salad in New England to canned Wahoo in Hawaii. If you think about it that's how it should be, and retailers should be budgeting to constantly try new lines of goods every year even at a loss, as that's the only way to find new things that sell.
Our local one tried replacing about half an aisle of wine in their liquor section with bombers of craft beer (including stuff from small local breweries). The experiment only lasted about a year, much to my disappointment. I asked why they stopped doing it, and the guy in the liquor department said they were only moving about $1,000 worth of it a week, so they switched it all back to wine because "we'd rather sell an $18 bottle of wine than a $6 bottle of beer". Oh well, hard to argue with that.
The area also has a sizable Asian population, and the Costco regularly stocks stuff like seaweed salad and kimchi. The seaweed salad is good. I haven't tried their kimchi because -- while I love kimchi -- a half-gallon jug of the stuff is a bit much!
bfg-9000 wrote:Cattle Drive Chili is "distributed by" Hanover Foods of PA and made by Castleberry's Food Co of GA so is still around, even on Amazon. The Costcos around here only seem to stock the 6-packs once a year, and there was a big recall for botulism in 2007.
I prefer the crunchy calculator style over the botulism style.
derFunkenstein wrote:I don't like NY style but I could see how you'd expect it where you are.
Want to read about truly awful pizza? Look up St. Louis style. Basically processed cheese and crackers.
There was a bar near campus when I was in college that used to serve pizza like that. I never understood the attraction. Especially when there were two local chains with fantastic Chicago-style pizza (sorry, Ned).