Costco says bye, bye to chocolate frozen yogurt, I say #byebyeCostco

Costco shopping followed by a meal there has been a regular Thursday ritual for me since at least 2006, first for shopping and dinner at its food court and, since I retired in 2015, for Thursday shopping and lunch.

Costco’s food court frozen yogurt swirl, consisting of fat-free vanilla and fat-free chocolate frozen yogurt, is one of the few dessert treats I can reasonably eat on my heart-healthy restricted diet.

That’s why I was shocked and despondent this past Thursday when I went to order my usual lunch, a salad and a twist of frozen yogurt, only to be told Costco was no longer selling chocolate frozen yogurt at the food court!!!

A little online research found others already have posted about this, apparently the former $1.39 frozen yogurt twist is being replaced by a bowl of frozen acai sherbet with berries and granola for $5.99!!!!

Obviously Costco is trying to appeal to Millennials, who are not shopping there now, with this new offering.

It’s also trying to do it on the cheap by making the new sherbet in the machines that had made the chocolate yogurt rather than bringing in new equipment so it could be offered it in addition to the chocolate yogurt (the vanilla will stay on the other side of the same frozen dessert making machines).

At more than four times the price, Costco obviously can lose business and still make more money than it has on the chocolate. It also now has a place to use aging berries from  its produce section than it might otherwise throw away, so it will cut its food waste as well I suspect.

But it will alienate many long-time customers in the process. I regularly would buy four swirls and bring them home to freeze so we could have them throughout the week. Without that option, I see no reason to eat at the food court again.

The salad there is large, but it needs to be deconstructed and I bring my own oil and vinegar to use to keep it from being a fat-filled mess of a meal. Why bother now. My post about how to make a Costco salad healthy is one of the most popular on my site. Everything else offered is over-loaded with salt and fat.

There are staples I buy at Costco — bananas, coffee, low-salt canned Italian tomatoes, Greek yogurt, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lettuce — that I’ll likely continue to get there simply because they’re cheaper than elsewhere. But my regular trips are a thing of the past.

I’ll also likely downgrade from my executive membership since I won’t be shopping there as often now. And please don’t ask why I won’t get just vanilla.

I struggle every day to make my food choices interesting and diverse despite cutting down on salt, fat or sugar. Something as plain vanilla and plain vanilla is not going to do it for me.

Bye, bye Costco!