Why Costco Will Never Raise the Price of Rotisserie Chicken

[E. Q. Taft]

It’s hard to believe, but before 1994, grocery stores did not sell packaged rotisserie chickens. Boston Market is credited with convincing consumers to pay for one of the easiest meals to make at home, in the early 1990s, and that’s when grocery stores saw an opening, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

The pre-roasted birds, packaged in plastic or paper and sitting beneath heat lamps at national chains like Kroger and Costco, might be flavored with garlic and lemon or barbecue spices. In addition to the convenience, the smell is a draw, as the Journal points out. It’s enough to get people into the store in the first place, at which point they’ll likely buy other items, making them a loss leader, in industry parlance.

https://www.eater.com/2018/1/5/16853...y-stores-price

[dfresh]

Very smart business move. It makes me wish we still had the Costco membership, except that every time we went shopping we got great deals on other things we didn't need too.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Costco takes their unsold chickens and makes them into chicken noodle soup!

And shredded chicken!

[ChasFink]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

Costco takes their unsold chickens and makes them into chicken noodle soup!

And shredded chicken!

Sounds a little urban-legendy to me!

[dfresh]

No, the urban legend part is that the "chickens" are actually overgrown rats, or protein blobs grown in tanks.

That is, of course, due to Obama and Clinton doing something nefarious for China.

[Sylvanz]

Why? It makes perfect sense to me. As long as the chicken is not past an expiry date and is properly handled, using it as an ingredient in another properly dated item is a good way to try to use it and not waste it.
Where do you think the ground beef in Wendy's chili comes from?

[GenYus234]

Originally Posted by Sylvanz

Where do you think the ground beef in Wendy's chili comes from?

Octopus eyeballs?

My wife used to work at Wendy's. Any patties left unsold at the end of the night are mashed up for chili.

[Sylvanz]

Boringly true. But I like the Octopus eyeballs better. It has such an Urban Legend beauty to it, and is so much more entertaining.

[Darth Credence]

On the chicken noodle soup front, that is also what happens to a lot of egg layers when they get to old. When I worked in automation, we worked with a chicken farm, and they sold all the old chickens to Campbells.

[thorny locust]

It’s hard to believe, but before 1994, grocery stores did not sell packaged rotisserie chickens.

I could swear they were being sold by at least one semi-independent grocery store in this area by the mid 1980's.

Maybe my memory is wonky, however.

[GenYus234]

Re: Darth Credence's post: Isn't that why there are categories of chicken like roasting hens and stewing hens?

[Lainie]

I'm skeptical of the claim they were never sold in grocery stores before 1994. I also recall seeing them in stores (convenience stores, I think not grocery stores) before that. And my late FIL's dog once famously ate an entire rotisserie chicken, apparently including the bag and the bones, when left alone with it. My FIL died in 1991.

[overyonder]

Originally Posted by E. Q. Taft

It’s hard to believe, but before 1994, grocery stores did not sell packaged rotisserie chickens.

Hogwash. We were buying rotisserie chickens at IGA's in the 1970's.

OY

[snopes]

Yes, I certainly remember grocery stores selling packaged, cooked chicken that was kept under heat lamps well over 40 years ago. Maybe it technically wasn't "rotisserie chicken" because it was cooked some other way, but the basic concept was the same.

[thorny locust]

snopes, I remember seeing them on the spit in the 80's; although, again, my memory is not a provable cite.

GenYus, soup/stewing chickens are older birds, usually spent layers. They taste fine, but may need to be simmered for as much as several hours to make them tender enough to eat -- an advantage, actually, for long-cooking dishes such as my mother's cacchiatore, in which the bird is first boiled as for chicken soup and then baked in a sauce; the standard young broiler/fryer will disintegrate before the dish is done, you need a stew chicken to do it right.

[Lainie]

I posted the article on FB and so far about 5 people have chimed in with their own memories of buying whole cooked chickens at various stores long before 1994.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by ChasFink

Sounds a little urban-legendy to me!

It's not a UL- they take the unsold chickens at the end of the day and make them into packages of boneless rotisserie chicken meat and fresh chicken soup.

And it's delicious!

[Darth Credence]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

Re: Darth Credence's post: Isn't that why there are categories of chicken like roasting hens and stewing hens?

There are indeed those classes, for birds bred for those purposes. But soup apparently doesn't need a specific bird, just the cheapest chicken they can get.

[thorny locust]

The soup will taste better if the chicken tastes better, though. Which depends both on what the chicken's been eating, and on whether it had room enough to move around much while it was alive. I wouldn't be surprised if breed might also make some difference.

-- there are certainly chicken breeds bred primarily for eating (relatively large birds with relatively fast growth rates), others bred primarily for egg laying (high egg production), and some for dual use (compromise on those two needs; generally now older breeds for small home flock production.) I didn't know there were any breeds meant to produce soup chickens as opposed to roasters, though.