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Americans love their chicken, eating some 7.5 billion of them every year. That’s enough for about 23 birds for every man, woman, and child in the country. So the fact that inflation has hit poultry prices particularly hard — chicken prices increased 18.6 percent between June 2021 and June 2022, outpacing inflation for food as a whole — has been tough for Americans to swallow.
But throughout the year of inflation — and for 11 years before that — one poultry product has remained at the same bargain-basement price: Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken.
The roasted birds have been hailed as an economic lifeline — most rotisserie chickens will run you $6 to $10 — but the chicken isn’t cheap because of corporate benevolence. In 2015, Costco said it was able to maintain its low price because the company considers the rotisserie chicken a “loss leader.” That means its purpose isn’t to bring in profits, but rather to bring in customers to buy more of the wholesale retailer’s bulk toilet paper and five-packs of deodorant. And it works. The item is so popular among Costco members that it has its own Facebook fan page with 19,000 followers.
But there’s another reason the birds have remained so affordable. In 2019, Costco made an unprecedented move to source its chicken at even lower margins: It set up its own feed mill, hatchery, and slaughter plant in Nebraska, and contracted nearby farmers to raise over 100 million birds each year, all under the name Lincoln Premium Poultry (LPP). It could be saving the company up to 35 cents per bird.
Costco’s inflation-proof $4.99 rotisserie chicken, explained
Picking apart what the retail giant’s poultry staple says about the present and future of factory farming.
www.vox.com
