Costco Food Court Foods That Flopped And Vanished

Costco's food court dishes taste pretty good – well, most of the time anyway. The big-box store is famous for its ultra-cheap meals and menu items, some of which really hit the spot. For every success under Costco's belt, though, there's a failure sitting right behind it, and the retailer has had its fair share of food court flops in its time. Costco tends to be pretty quiet about when it releases and takes away food court menu items, perhaps because it doesn't want folks like us sniffing around and discussing its misses. Well, sadly for the store, the internet never forgets.

A lot of Costco food court foods flopped and disappeared because of one simple reason: flavor. Its kitchens aren't equipped to do everything, and as it quickly found, foods like cheeseburgers just didn't suit its standard facilities, leading to poorly cooked food that compared badly to other fast food places. In other cases, Costco's recipes and proportions have been all wrong: Its infamously bad roast beef sandwich was more bread than meat, and its mango smoothie tasted strangely dry. If you've ever wondered where that food went that everyone seemed to hate, we'll tell you right here.

The story of Costco's beloved churros is a tale of two halves. Its churros first appeared in its food courts way back before the world even knew what COVID-19 was, but when the pandemic hit and the stores closed, they were understandably no longer available. When Costco's physical locations reopened, though, the churros were mysteriously gone. However, it wasn't long before the store listened to the pleas of people who wanted them back, and at the start of 2021, word started to spread that the churros were coming back. Then, they did — and they sucked.

The problem was that Costco appeared to rethink its churro recipe during the food's absence from its stores. Rather than them arriving at stores fresh, they were shipped frozen. This gave them a dry texture that was nothing like the original churros. Aside from this, Costco jacked up the price by almost 50%, pricing the churros at $1.49 instead of the original $1. The combination of a deterioration in quality and a higher price was too much for most people, and the churro rapidly dropped in popularity. Costco pulled it from its stores, presumably out of sheer embarrassment, and it was never seen again.

How hard can it be to get a mango smoothie right? Apparently, it's slightly more difficult than Costco thought. This food court item should have been a winner, and when it was introduced nationwide in 2023 after a test run in Hawaii, people were pretty excited. It added to Costco's already impressive selection of frozen and cold treats, but it also felt like it was somewhat healthy, and it promised to refresh you after hours pushing around a shopping cart.

It didn't do that, though, because it was terrible. This menu item inspired a surprisingly high level of hatred when it premiered, with people flocking online to discuss how much they hated it. "The mango tastes like baby food and the color is off," said one Redditor, with others talking about how sour it was and the fact that they had to throw their smoothie out before finishing it. We kind of feel bad, to be honest. In better hands, those mangoes could have had a much better time.

Costco was clearly listening to what folks were saying about its new item, and it acted pretty quickly. Mere months later, people were reporting that the mango smoothie was unavailable in their local stores. Costco's Berry Smoothie, meanwhile, was quietly brought back.

When Costco brought out a range of healthier food court options in 2018, we were impressed. The food court had long been known for its hot dogs and pizzas, but now the store was wising up to modern food trends and offering customers way more choice. One of the items it debuted at this time was its vegan al pastor salad. Instead of pork, it used plant-based protein, and piled it onto a bed of fresh vegetables.

It should have been a total winner, but unfortunately, its taste let it down. Folks immediately noted that it tasted nothing like actual al pastor, and was a mere imitation of its usual flavors. "If you've ever tried anything "al pastor" and liked it, you will be sorely disappointed by this," said a Redditor who had tried the salad when it was released. "Instead, the flavor resembles one of those cheap taco seasoning packets." Another person stated that they were left unimpressed by the salad, and that the retailer should have just gone with regular meat for it. That defeats the point of a vegan salad in the first place, but what was clear was that Costco hadn't tested this product rigorously enough. It quickly pulled it from its menus, and it's now just a memory.

Costco's roast beef sandwich is the stuff of legend, and few food court items have created as much furor as this one. When this sandwich was released in 2023, it immediately divided opinion. Some people liked it and praised its larger proportions. This was indeed a pretty hefty beast, and was designed to fill you up. The majority of people, though, loathed it from the outset.

The main issue with this sandwich was its price. Costco was selling the roast beef sandwich at $9.99, which was way more expensive than its other food court items. Remember, this is a retailer that prides itself on being able to offer hot dogs for $1.50, and a ten-dollar sandwich just felt like it was out of sync with that kind of pricing. Simultaneously, Costco had gotten its proportions really wrong with the roast beef sandwich: People pointed out that it had way too much bread for what was inside, and on top of that, it was dry and difficult to chew through. There were too many issues here to salvage it properly, and eventually Costco realized that it had to throw in the towel. It discontinued its roast beef sandwich pretty rapidly, scrubbing it from its menus.

In the summer of 2025, Costco decided that it was time for its customers to get a new refreshing treat. That came in the form of its frozen strawberry lemonade. Priced at $2.99, the lemonade appeared on menus with an enticing pink hue that looked like the ultimate salvation on summer days. However, if you blinked, you might have missed it: It was only around for a matter of weeks before Costco pulled it from stores.

Why did it disappear so quickly? It seems that this one came down to good old-fashioned quality control. There was apparently a manufacturing issue with this drink, with a person on Reddit explaining that, according to an employee, "the reason why they stopped selling the frozen strawberry lemonade drink at the food court was that there was an issue with the bags that the strawberries came in." Somewhat revoltingly, an employee over on Facebook then revealed that the issue was the fact that black mold was growing in the bags. Pretty gross, huh? On top of that, people noted that the lemonade was difficult to suck up through a straw, and it seems that strawberry pieces would get stuck in them. Looks like Costco should have tested this one a bit more carefully.

It's always sad when restaurants and retailers make a big swing and miss entirely, especially when the swing they're making is for good reasons. When Costco decided that it was time to introduce healthy options to its food courts in 2018, its new açaí bowl was central to its mission. Costco was confident enough in its quality to release the bowl nationwide, a move that turned out to be a big mistake.

First off, the price of this dish felt too high. At $4.99, it put a lot of people off from the start, and while it was definitely cheaper than a lot of other açaí bowls out there, it tasted like Costco had cut corners. Reviewers who tried the bowl stated that the açaí had an artificial taste that overpowered everything else in the dish. There were also serious problems with the construction of the dish: While some people got an aesthetically pleasing bowl that looked like the picture on the menu, others got a messy mound of ingredients that had the appearance of being cobbled together from leftovers in the fridge going into their açaí bowl. People ultimately realized that their açaí bowls would be better from literally anywhere else, and Costco had to get rid of the item that it promoted so heavily.

Italian sausage sandwiches are usually fairly uncontroversial, and even an amateur cook can make a pretty decent one. That's what makes the fact that Costco dropped the ball on its food court version so surprising. When this sandwich first started appearing in its food courts, it felt like the sophisticated older brother of its famous hot dog, and it had a price point of $2.79 to match. Although that still wasn't super expensive, it was reasonable enough to expect an upgraded level of quality from the Italian sausage, compared to the cheap and cheerful regular dog.

Unfortunately, it didn't deliver. Multiple reviews of this sandwich noted that it was overly wet and difficult to pick up, let alone eat. The vegetables crammed inside the sandwich may have looked appealing thanks to their vibrant tones, but they were texturally pretty gross and had a limp, soggy mouthfeel. Its flavors were also fairly unbalanced, with too much saltiness. The Italian sausage sandwich never caused the same controversy as other food court items, but Costco still knew that it was never going to be a permanent feature — and in 2020, that prophecy came true when it quietly disappeared from stores.

How hard can it be to mess up a cheeseburger? Apparently, it's easier than it looks. Back in 2017, Costco decided that it was time to enter the cheeseburger wars, and debuted its own spin on the sandwich at a small number of its food courts. It charged its patrons $4.99 for a massive ⅓-pound patty served in a huge bun, and while the size was certainly impressive, this price point was a high one for Costco. The store was clearly going for a Shake Shack-inspired burger as opposed to a McDonald's or Burger King vibe, but the proof was in the pudding: To justify that price, it had to taste good.

Well, it didn't. The response to Costco's cheeseburger was swift and brutal: People hated it. Virtually everything was wrong with this burger, from its poor construction to its overt saltiness, which also came with a strange lack of taste. One Redditor summed it up succinctly when they stated that it was "hands down the worst cheese burger. It tasted like a microwaved elementary school cheese burger. I almost got my money back." Yikes. The burger lasted a couple of years until it was discontinued around 2019, and it's safe to say that people don't exactly miss it.

Carne asada wrapped in dough and baked until piping hot should be a winner, right? That's what Costco was banking on when it released its carne asada bake way back in 2010. The store swapped out its turkey wrap for this new food court item, and like its chicken bake, it promised a full meal in a few easy bites.

Unfortunately for Costco, its carne asada bake turned out to be a complete flop, and just a couple years later it was trying to erase all memory of it. It's not that the carne asada bake was actively terrible; it just wasn't very good. Carne asada should be bursting with intensity, and this bake was bland, underpowered, and weirdly mushy. The cheese that came inside, which should have offered a substantial amount of creaminess, failed to deliver. Sadly, there just wasn't that much in there to begin with, which felt out of step with Costco's usual abundance. This is one of those food court items that feels like it kinda never happened in the first place — but it did, and we're sure that Costco remains haunted by it.