How can Costco sell an apple pie the size of a manhole cover for 12 bucks?

Loss leader like their Hot Dogs and Rotisserie Chicken.

I don’t think the apple pie is a loss leader. I am betting that at wholesale cost, the dough for the pie is about a dollar, tops and the apples probably come in huge pails like the 10 gallon pails of paint and tile mortar at Home Depot. The apples, maybe a dollar worth at wholesale cost. Now if you made that at home, then yes, it’s costing more than $5 between the dough and the apples, even if the apples are 1.50 per lb, apples alone would be $6.

The hot dogs with soda for 1.50 and the huge rotisserie chickens for $5, definitely loss leaders and Costco admits that they fight with suppliers to keep the cost down so they can charge the same they’ve always been charging, because they know people will go in there just for the chicken and they’ll grab a hot dog and soda for lunch, and between the chicken and the hot dog, they’ll drop another hundred or two in the store.

@stanleybmanly I would love to be your personal chef for a week! You are so funny. All those girls and no cooks?!
Apples are literally free for us here with so many apple trees. I bet they just got a great deal like @jca2 said.
Crust is just salt, flour and Crisco/butter, so not expensive at all.

That’s just the point. All WHAT girls? The wife is a fabulous cook and makes a killer apple pie—just not enough of them or often enough. It’s worse for cakes. She makes the best carrot cake ever—once a year on my birthday. We have an apple tree in the yard that yields bushels of apples in the Fall. We give em away and that is when there is nothing made with apples that we EVER lack. That brings up the perfect topic for another question, but I’ve gotta come back here to complain about my wife and these horrible spells she gets about some superstitious war on sugar.

The apples are not pretty ones found in the supermarket, they are imperfect and sold in huge amounts and very inexpensive. Maybe they even own apple orchards?

@stan I thought you told me you had daughters?
Well if it’s for your health, makes sense. :)
Carrot cake is not easy, sounds delish.

They’re listed on the pie as “organic”. The big shock is that the monster pie is just crammed with the apples and baked PERFECTLY. The apples still retain a bit of crisp, and the buttery cinnamon floods your palate. The double crust is actually flaky, and I cannot believe the huge pie can be this good.

There’s only one daughter and she’s in her mid 40s with the cooking skills I had in my teens. Since the pandemic she shows up with to go foods and desserts. I could live lavishly on the frightening amounts of money she is able to lavish on the overpriced food in this town. I fell down in spoiling her to some habits that stick from the days when she was growing up. My son had the great fortune to acquire a sensible wife from Nicaragua who cooks regularly and well. His sister has neither a husband nor kids. Just a great job and money to burn.