Who serves a better hot dog, Sam’s or Costco? We rate the dogs — and the pizza
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Trends can come and go, money markets will rise and fall, but the $1.50 hot dog and soda combo is forever.
One of the most famous dishes on the planet is the buck-fifty quarter-pound hot dog and soft drink combo (can we call it a pairing?) at warehouse membership stores. Perhaps the Costco hot dog is the most popular version, but Sam’s Club also serves a rival dog and soda duo that clocks in a few cents cheaper.
We sampled the hot dogs and pizza slices from both Costco and Sam’s Club, dining in the afternoon at the center of household commerce. While the orders were practically identical, the experiences were very different. Here’s what we found out.
Comparing the menu, ordering and prices
▪ Costco: Durham, NC
The food court is one of the last things you’ll see as you leave Costco, with the menu posted on the wall like a billboard.
The famous Costco hot dog sits in the middle like a centerpiece turkey on Thanksgiving, the yards-long frank a roasty brown and its $1.50 price practically etched in stone.
These days you have to be a Costco member to eat at the food court, so maybe we should put an asterisk on that $1.50 hot dog price tag.
At the Durham Costco, you order and pay at a self-service kiosk set aside near the condiment section. The menu is a touch-screen tablet and the hot dog combo is the first option. If you only want a hot dog, you’re out of luck. There’s no obvious way to omit the soda. Also there’s no proof of membership when ordering, so if you’re somehow able to make it to the food court as a non-member, the affordable bounty lies before you.
I went at 1:30 on a weekday afternoon. Most of the food court tables were filled, but the kiosks were free and no one appeared to be loitering and waiting on their food. After ordering and paying, I had my hot dog, slice of pepperoni pizza and a 20-ounce cup in less than 60 seconds. The price was $3.75.
▪ Sam’s Club: Durham, NC
At Sam’s Club, it’s a “Cafe” not a food court. You don’t have to be a Sam’s Club member to gain access to the Cafe, the giant store’s tiny restaurant tucked beside the row of checkout aisles.
The Cafe menu is posted on a series of TVs affixed to the wall, and at the Durham Sam’s Club there are no self-service kiosks, though they are used at other locations. Shoppers can also order food from an app on their phones, but I didn’t see anyone doing that during a weekday visit. At the Durham Sam’s Club Cafe you have to order the old-fashioned way, standing in line and ordering from an employee.
At 2 p.m. on a weekday, the Cafe was busy and the lines were a few families deep. It wasn’t until I was near the front that I learned the bad news: they were out of cooked hot dogs. Then the news got worse: more hot dogs wouldn’t be available for 40 minutes.
I ordered a slice of pepperoni pizza and a cherry Icee and got them immediately, spending $3.09. Meanwhile I considered what to do with myself while I waited 40 minutes for a hot dog. I loitered in the store. I browsed the aisles and wondered to myself how much prosciutto is too much prosciutto, then I left and ran errands at a nearby grocery store. I returned to Sam’s, waiting in line once again and ultimately rewarded with a hot dog and soda for $1.48.
Comparing the food at Sam’s vs. Costco
▪ Costco: The hot dog & soda experience
When you see the yards-long photo of the famous Costco hot dog, you’ll see that the frank extends beyond the bun, a bun that appears to have sesame seeds on it. In real life you won’t find any sesame seeds, but who needs them when the bun is warm and toasty and — true enough — the hot dog is longer than the bun.
There is a hot dog at just about every table in the Costco food court, dozens of them dispersed among families, moms with toddlers, single shoppers parking their pallets of groceries next to their table and a group of senior golfers apparently just off the course.
There’s a row of pump-action condiment dispensers offering unbranded ketchup, yellow mustard and sweet relish. I opt for mustard and relish, applied a little less artfully than I envisioned — the dressed hot dog adorned with globs instead of flowing arcs of mustard. My dreams of condiment artistry go unfulfilled.
The hot dog, advertised as a quarter pound, is massive — certainly a meal unto itself. It can’t be overstated how essential a warmed or toasted bun is, but beyond that, this one is kind of bland and the frank itself tastes a bit underseasoned, which seems impossible for a hot dog.
Hot dog and soda: $1.50
▪ Costco: Slice of pizza
I was the only person I saw foolish enough to order a hot dog and a slice of pizza, but this is service journalism after all.
A slice of Costco pizza hangs over the plate, which, like the hot dog, makes a massive bit of food appear even larger.
For all the hubbub about the hot dogs, it’s possible the pizza at Costco is the unheralded hero of the food court, baked in an huge double conveyor oven visible through the kitchen.
My slice had a thick, airy crust and a crispy, browned bottom. There were 10 pepperoni slices so evenly spaced out I started to wonder if AI was somehow involved. This is pizza party pizza at its finest: cheesy, not too much sauce, slicked with orange grease, all for $2 a slice or $9.95 for a whole pie.
Pepperoni slice $2
▪ Sam’s Club: The hot dog & soda experience
Once I had my hot dog in hand I discovered the treasures of the Sam’s Club condiment bar. Everything is in packets instead of pumps, and beyond the mustard, ketchup and relish, there are bags of sauerkraut, the ultimate hot dog flex.
The Sam’s Club hot dog is exactly the same size as its bun, which to the eye can make it seem somewhat smaller than its advertised quarter pound. While the frank was as hot as you’d expect a 40-minute cooked hot dog to be, the bun isn’t warmed or toasted and that makes for an uneven eating experience.
Which is too bad, because the hot dog itself bursts with flavor and has a nice snap from the casing. It is well seasoned and juicy.
Hot dog and soda: $1.48
▪ Sam’s Club: Pizza
While everyone orders hot dogs at Costco, most people are ordering slices of pizza at Sam’s.
In a warming cabinet there are options beyond pepperoni and cheese — but those options only get meatier, such as the addition of bacon or ham or both.
The Sam’s pizzas are cooked in a conveyor belt oven and come out sort of flat and gooey. It’s a great sign to see cheese oozing beyond its crust, but here it’s because there’s not a lot of structure.
The Sam’s pizzas look like they could be thin crust, but the crust is neither crispy or crunchy, but on the flabby side of chewy. The sauce is sweet and tomatoey and despite a generous heaping of cheese, overwhelms the slice. There were 6.5 pepperonis on my slice, arranged in sort of a circle.
Pepperoni slice: $2
By the numbers
Upon reading my initial report on the Costco vs. Sam’s Club hot dog showdown, my editor questioned whether the hot dogs could really be roughly the same size. Stubbornly, I insisted they were, that maybe it was just a bun discrepancy creating an optical illusion.
Because we seek truth, I was sent back to the stores armed with a kitchen scale.
In reality, though Sam’s and Costco both advertise a quarter-pound hot dog, one delivers more, one delivers less.
Costco:
Hot dog and bun: 6.90 ounces
Hot dog only: 4.15 ounces
Length: ~9 inches
Sam’s Club
Hot dog and bun: 6.30 ounces
Hot dog only: 3.9 ounces
Length: ~7 inches
Takeaways: Who wins the food court showdown?
Costco: There’s an entire subculture built around Costco’s $1.50 hot dog and soda deal, which remains one of the great bargain bites. But perhaps there should be more love for the brand’s pizza, which bests the famous hot dog.
Sam’s: We can assume that it doesn’t usually take 40 minutes to get a hot dog at the Sam’s Club Cafe. If you’re able to get one immediately, you’ll get a version that could be better than its much more famous Costco rival if only more attention was paid to the bun. Also, maybe skip the pizza.
This story was originally published March 27, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
