We taste-tested chickens & birthday cakes at Costco, Sam’s and BJs. Who had the best?

Three quick takeaways:

• The News & Observer conducted a taste test of rotisserie chicken, vanilla sheet cake and butter croissants from Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale.
• Newsroom staff declared Costco to have the best vanilla sheet cake and rotisserie chicken, while Sam’s Club had the best butter croissants.
• The taste test, while unscientific, aimed to determine quality alongside quantity and pricing at these wholesale clubs.

Back in February, I had to figure out how to fit six rotisserie chickens, three packs of large butter croissants and three 10-inch sheet cakes in my trunk, all at the same time.

For some wholesale club shoppers, those are rookie numbers. But I was playing trunk Tetris to figure out how an unexpected slam on the brakes wouldn’t smash gobs of vanilla frosting across my windshield.

These items are popular buys at our area’s warehouse clubs — a trio of Costco’s Kirkland Signature, Sam’s Club Member’s Mark and BJ’s Wellsley Farms products.

I was bringing all these goods to The News & Observer’s newsroom in downtown Raleigh so our staff members could conduct a blind taste test as part of our package on the best deals at wholesale clubs.

The prices and quantities can tell us which store has the lowest prices, but we need our taste buds to tell us which club sells the tastiest sheet cake, juiciest chicken and fluffiest croissant.

Before we present our findings, let’s run through the methodology.

How The N&O taste-tested wholesale chicken, cake and croissants

The News & Observer conducted a blind taste test of three popular items at our three local wholesale clubs. We tasted rotisserie chicken, vanilla sheet cake and butter croissants, pitting them against each other to determine which wholesale club makes the “best” of each one.

Before we get any further, I’ll say here that we’re just hungry newspaper people, making decisions using our own taste buds and flavor preferences. This is by no means a scientific study. (But if you want to go a little deeper with these flavor and texture profiles, keep reading for some notes from our food writer, Drew Jackson, who blessed the taste test with his culinary expertise.)

None of the items allowed for seamless apples to apples comparisons. Here’s why:

• We broke the chicken up into snack-size portions ahead of the taste test, but some plates of chicken only had white meat, some only had dark meat and some had a mix of both. Some plates had skin, some did not. Two of the wholesale chickens were bought just two hours before the taste test, while the third was bought four hours in advance.

• Some plates of cake were end pieces, while others were middle pieces. This impacts the amount of frosting you got, which — as all cake-lovers know — can make or break the slice. Frosting lovers revel in the corner piece with extra piping, while frosting haters want the piece that’s smack dab in the middle.

• Some croissant bits were the squishy middle parts, while others were the crispier corners. It can be difficult to compare a pillowy middle to a crusty corner when those are the two pieces you have.

• Even though we had quite a few leftovers, the taste test was blind, so attendees didn’t know which cake they should take another slice of, or which chicken drumstick to grab, to make their comparison more equitable. We wanted to keep the fairness of the taste test front and center.

Wholesale clubs taste test: Quantities and prices

Let’s run through the products (and their prices):

Butter croissants:

• All three stores sold 12-packs of large butter croissants for just shy of $6. That’s 50 cents per sandwich croissant.

Rotisserie chicken:

• All three chickens weighed and cost the same: $4.98 for 3 pounds of chicken.

Vanilla sheet cake:

• Costco: The 10” cake weighed 62 ounces and cost $15.99. That’s 26 cents per ounce.

• BJ’s: The 10” cake weighed 72 ounces and cost $19.99. That’s 28 cents per ounce.

• Sam’s Club: The 10” cake weighed 83 ounces and cost $16.98. That’s 20 cents per ounce.

Which wholesale club has the best food?

Without further ado, the winners (according to the willing members of The N&O’s staff):

• Costco makes the best vanilla sheet cake and rotisserie chicken.

• Sam’s Club makes the best butter croissants.

• BJ’s was rarely a favorite for our staff.

Here’s how the staff judged the taste test:

• Each wholesale club was represented by a color, that way we could keep the taste test blind. Pink represented Costco, orange represented Sam’s Club and blue represented BJ’s — but our hungry staffers didn’t know which was which.

• Everyone was asked to try nine items total — three plates of croissants, three plates of cake and three plates of croissants (one per store). To do this, they grabbed three plates for each item, one of each color.

• To select their favorite, they took a sticky note of the same color and added it to our non-scientific chart (which, really, was just a wall with some masking tape on it). They were asked to write some comments on the sticky note about what went into their selection.

• We determined the “best store” per item by seeing which one had the most sticky notes of one color.

Here’s how our staff ranked each item:

• Chicken: 13 votes for Costco, 5 votes for Sam’s Club, 0 votes for BJ’s.

• Cake: 10 votes for Costco, 4 votes for Sam’s Club, 3 votes for BJ’s.

• Croissants: 13 votes for Sam’s Club, 4 votes for Costco, 3 votes for BJ’s.

Which wholesale club has the best rotisserie chicken?

Costco.

Kirkland chicken got 72.2% of the vote, while the remaining 27.8% went to Member’s Mark (Sam’s Club).

Nobody said Wellsley Farms (BJ’s) chicken was their favorite.

Here’s what our staff said of Costco’s chicken:

• Flavorful and moist.

• This is the only one that didn’t make me want a drink of water.

• Moist, but crispy in all the right places.

• Well seasoned, salty but not too much. Not overcooked. Others were bland and dry by comparison.

Of Sam’s Club:

• On the superhighway of chicken, this one goes the speed limit.

• It’s not fair that I got more dark meat and skin on this plate than others, but this was juicer than the others.

And of BJ’s:

• Bad, bad, bad. So bland it makes me concerned I have COVID.

Which wholesale club has the best vanilla sheet cake?

Costco.

Kirkland cake got more than half of the vote with 58.8%. Member’s Mark came in second place with 23.5%, and Wellsley Farms ranked last with 17.6%.

Here’s what our staff said of Costco’s cake:

• Airy and not too sweet. Perfect with some coffee.

• Lightest and flakiest. Cake is perfectly spongy. Icing is perfect and not too sweet.

• Moist and tasty. I liked the cream in the middle.

Of Sam’s Club:

• Cake needs to have personality. This one actually has a chance to be the cool kid in class.

• The icing is lighter and cake is fluffier.

And of BJ’s:

• Not overpowering on icing, and I don’t love too much icing. This got it right.

Which wholesale club has the best butter croissants?

Sam’s Club.

Member’s Mark croissants got the majority of the votes with 65%. Kirkland came in second place with 20%, and Wellsley Farms ranked last with 15%.

Here’s what our staff said of Sam’s Club’s croissants:

• Flaky and chewy with the right amount of moisture. Color is perfect!

• Best texture and flavor. Buttery but not overwhelming.

• Not dry! Some others were. Just the right amount of flakiness and flavor.

• The only one with any flavor. Slightly sweet with a crispy edge. Not over-dry, which the others were. Still, needs salt.

• Very delicious. Had three!

Of Costco’s:

• Nicely fluffed and browned. This is my style of croissant. Dark, crispy and flakier rather than doughy.

• Light and slightly crunchy.

And of BJ’s:

• Had a good texture to it. About the same as [Sam’s Club], but [Costco] tasted stale.

• Has a denser but still buttery taste. [Sam’s Club] was too white bread for me, despite a flakier (desirable) texture.

Costco sweeps in Drew Jackson’s taste test

Drew Jackson, The N&O’s food writer (and judge in many of our previous taste tests), wrote up his own notes about the taste test, detailing the best and worst parts of each selection.

He declared Costco the winner in all three categories.

Here’s what he thought for each item he tasted:

Croissants:

• Costco: Deliciously golden brown with crispy outer flakes and airy inner layers. Baked all the way through. This is a solid no-frills French-style croissant, something to pull apart with a morning coffee, but not eat as a sandwich. Balanced buttery flavor with webby center layers like a pastry kaleidoscope.

• Sam’s Club: This one is pale and doughy, not crispy at all, but the flavor is rich and buttery. For me, it’s underbaked and even has some raw dough. But if you like half-baked cookies, this is your croissant.

• BJ’s: This one is on the stale side of crispy. Pretty muted butter flavor and kind of tough in parts.

Chicken:

• Costco: A pirate might say [rotisserie] me timbers. Well seasoned, nicely roasted and quite moist, both dark and white meat, tender and flavorful. Could be a tailgate or weeknight hero.

• Sam’s Club: Flavorful skin, nice color on the roast but a bit dry. Not soul-sucking dry, but not ideal. Well seasoned.

• BJ’s: This one made me sad. It was plenty moist and had a nice texture but damn was it bland. It tasted like it hadn’t been seasoned at all.

Cake:

• Costco: This was love at first sight. I knew this would be my pick before tasting it, the crumb was loose and crumbly, but moist, lightly sweetened with a touch of vanilla. The icing was sweet but not cloying, with a touch of lemon. This could be a wedding cake or a retirement cake for someone everyone really liked.

• Sam’s Club: This is a solid birthday cake, dense crumb with a nice vanilla flavor, fluffy cloud-like icing on the sweet side.

• BJ’s: The densest cake of the three, pretty firm and not very sweet. The icing is exceptionally sweet, but those don’t add up to a balanced cake.

If Drew’s taste test notes are your thing, here are some of his past adventures:

• We taste the best new foods at this year’s State Fair

• Cook Out’s Watermelon Milkshake doesn’t make sense, but it’s the only summer taste that matters

• Top 5 Triangle barbecue spots

The three bullet points at the top of the article were created using an AI tool for summarization and edited by journalists. Read more on our AI policy here.

This story was originally published March 27, 2024 at 5:45 AM.

Kimberly Cataudella Tutuska

The News & Observer

919-419-6630

Kimberly Tutuska (she/her) is the editor of North Carolina’s service journalism team.