Sam's Club Appears To Be Going Directly For Costco's Neck By Releasing A $1.38 Hot Dog + Soda Combo
NY Post- Let the hot dog and soda wars commence. Sam’s Club, the membership-only wholesale retailer owned by Walmart, is cutting the price of its hot dog and soda combination by 12 cents — from $1.50 to $1.38. The move — which undercuts Costco’s price of $1.50 for its hot dog and soda deal — was announced during a third-quarter earnings call by Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, according to Insider.
As a wise man once said...
Dammit, I was hoping my kids would never have to live through a hot dog war between two big box stores. Actually excuse me for using the W word for describing what Sam's Club did today.
Sam's Club did not declare war on Costco with this tube steak sale. They entered into a battle with Costco and have already lost said battle before I hit Publish on this blog because the Costco hot dog cannot have war waged on it. If anything, the Costco hot dog is what ends wars, like the atomic bomb did almost 80 years ago.
Everyone talks about how great of a deal the Costco hot dog + soda is. Not because getting a hot dog and a soda for $1.50 is a bargain, which it still is, especially in THIS economy. But it's because the Costco hot dog is a fucking monster of a dog that is a meal in itself with a top shelf bun that has those little seed things that let's you know your six quarters paid for nothing but the highest of quality. Add in all the Pepsi product your body can handle along with a footlong that clearly gets the ladies going.
However, the Costco hot dog is so much more than a comically underpriced delicious meal. It is the bedrock of the world's economy that ensures people around the globe that everything will be alright, no matter how much economic uncertainty is out there. Because no matter what is happening with the crooks like Large in the finance world, the Costco hot dog will remain a buck fitty as long as Jim Sinegal is alive.
Mental Floss- 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 raise [the price of] the effing hot dog, I will kill you," Sinegal said. "Figure it out."Taking his words to heart, Jelinek—who became Sinegal's successor in 2012—has never raised the price on Costco's hot dog. Incredibly, it has sold for the same $1.50 since the retail club first introduced the dogs to customers in 1984. The quarter-pound, all-beef tube and 20-ounce soda combo appears to be inflation-proof and immune to the whims of food distributors.
Do you think the head of Sam's Club is gonna slit someone's throat if they raise the price of their hot dog? Fuck no! If anything, all this news does is signal that Sam's Club is terrified of Costco during the always important holiday shopping season and have been forced to attempt to undercut their big box big brother like that incredible Tom Green skit from decades ago.
Because as another wise man once said…