Why Kirkland Mac And Cheese Quietly Disappeared From Costco
Boxed mac and cheese follows a different set of standards than the homemade version. It's supposed to taste a little, well, fake — but that's the best part about it. It's the meal you miss from your childhood, nostalgia in a bowl, and its popularity is evident when you walk into the grocery store. There are dozens of brands selling boxed mac and cheese these days. Kirkland Signature was among them, and though it's tough to mess up boxed mac and cheese, the Costco brand has proven it's not impossible.
Kirkland Mac and Cheese been discontinued for a while, at least three years according to online threads, and there wasn't an announcement. It just faded away after customers kept returning it with complaints of it being tasteless with a terrible texture. After discontinuing the boxed product, Costco released a pre-made version of the classic comfort food that now sits near the deli. Customers have gripes with the pre-made version, but the boxed mac and cheese was so bad that after cooking one box in the Costco multi-pack, people were donating the rest of the boxes.
What was so terrible about the Kirkland Mac and Cheese?
The Kirkland Mac and Cheese incident isn't the first time the brand has put an end to a product. Sometimes discontinued products make a big comeback and others stay a flop, and while there are several discontinued products from Costco we wish we had back, Kirkland mac and cheese isn't one of them. The cheese sauce wasn't creamy or cheesy enough. The pasta was grainy and mushy, even if you cooked it exactly as directed on the box. Overall, it walked the line between disappointing and revolting with zero flavor, not even a strong hint of salt.
Some customers were able to make Kirkland Mac and Cheese work for them, but it wasn't without sneaking in a few extras from some of the best mac and cheese recipes out there. One Redditor explained that if the cheese powder didn't totally dissolve before you added the pasta back in, it would throw the texture off — and claimed that real, unsalted butter was the key to making the dish edible.