Costco's rival launches a budget version of its beloved food item — and it might be even better
Costco is one of the biggest retailers in the country and competitors would love to see them fall.
Dec. 8 2025, Published 9:06 a.m. ET
Costco has become one of the most popular retailers in America and has a reputation for offering products at par with those by big brands, at lower prices. The retail giant has become a brand in its own right over the years, and now other big retailers such as Sam’s Club are replicating Costco's offerings, in a bid to achieve the same success.
Sam’s Club itself has 600 stores worldwide, but it still lags behind Costco, which has 800. There is an even larger difference between the revenue of the two companies. However, that was never going to stop Sam’s Club from trying every trick in the book. According to a report in The Street, it has come up with its own version of a Costco food court item.
Costco recently added a salted caramel brownie sundae to its food court menu, which has a soft-serve vanilla ice cream sundae topped with brownie bits and a good helping of caramel sauce. Customers were reportedly quite pleased with this new dessert item ahead of the holiday season, and it did not take Sam’s Club long to come up with their own version of a seasonal dessert item. Like Costco, it also has food courts too.
Their dessert product is called the Jingle Cookie Crunch Sundae. It also has a soft-serve vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate cookie crumbs and candy cookies. The competitive aspect of this product is its price. While Costco’s new dessert is worth $2.99, Sam’s Club is selling theirs for just $1.58 throughout December.
Over the years, Sam’s Club has employed several means to lure customers away from Costco. It has kept membership prices a lot lower than its retail giant competitor, which actually has one of the highest membership rates in the country for a retailer. Sam’s Club has also taken numerous steps to improve its in-house Member’s Mark brand to go up against Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand.
Sam's Club CEO Chris Nicholas even praised the Costco brand in 2024 and said that they hoped to replicate a similar kind of success story. “The club model survives because you have brilliant merchants focusing on creating or buying exceptional items,” he had said. “Costco did such a great job of that over the years with Kirkland, and we saw that be successful,” he added.
The one area in which Sam’s Club truly has a big advantage over Costco is its curbside pickup service. That’s something the latter has no plans of doing. The former also allows anyone to step into their food courts for a quick bite, unlike its competitor, which only allows members.
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