The Ingredients Inside Costco's Iconic Fruit Smoothie

As a kid, I loved Costco berry smoothies. Sure, I liked the free samples, the famous food court hot dogs, and the pizza, too. But the best part of any trip was when my mom handed me $1.45 to buy a smoothie while she waited in the checkout line. Sometimes, though, I'd get hit with the dreaded, "We can make smoothies at home." Mom's smoothies weren't the same. They lacked the sweetness, the rich berry flavor, the specific icy texture! Plus, Mom tried to make them healthy. Once, she even added kale.

Unfortunately, the passion that Costco executives have for low hot dog prices did not extend to smoothie recipes. The retailer phased out the smoothie in 2017 and replaced it with a different recipe. Some people preferred the replacement's tart taste. I was not one of them. The newer version nixed the added sugar, and with it, the rich berry flavor I loved. While many fans still know the new version as the berry smoothie, it's officially called the fruit smoothie. In 2023, the retailer tried to replace it with a mango smoothie — but the subsequent uproar brought it back.

The moral of the story? Appreciate your smoothies: They can disappear forever. I still think Mom was wrong — no homemade smoothie can top that food court magic. But, if you hone your smoothie-making skills and use Costco's ingredients as a guideline, it might be the next best thing.

True to its name, Costco's fruit smoothie is lighter on the berries than the older version. While I couldn't find an official ingredient list online, Reddit came to the rescue. On the r/Costco subreddit, one food court employee revealed that the smoothie was made from strawberries and "a purée of apple, pear, pineapple, and peach that gets blended together with blackberry and blueberry." An older comment provided more detail, explaining that the base included "water, pear purée, Apple purée, deionized pineapple juice concentrate, ascorbic acid, and citric acid." The commenter added that the berry mix was made from "strawberries, blackberries, pineapple, natural flavors, sodium citrate, carrot, and currant juice (for color)."

The fruit smoothie has gone through some ingredient tweaks, though. Costco employees on Reddit reported that the retailer switched brands around 2021. The updated version added açai to the mix, but the base ingredients of berries, apple, pear, and pineapple remained the same. Keep in mind that Costco's food court menu changes from place to place, though, so your location may still use the older brand. 

Those are the ingredients to focus on if you want to replicate the smoothie at home. There's no need to get fancy with purées, concentrates, and sodium citrate — just use good, old-fashioned fruit. You might need to mess around with the ratios, but the results will be tasty even if the first few attempts are off.

The general consensus on Reddit is that the original berry smoothie was made with DANNON's Yocream Very Berry Soft Serve Sorbet Mix. DANNON may have discontinued the mix, but the recipe remains. After some digging, I found a Yocream nutritional guide from 2017 — complete with an ingredient list. The first ingredient is water, but the flavor comes from sugar, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, boysenberries, raspberries, and marionberries (a specific kind of blackberry). The mix also included ingredients like corn starch, citric acid, corn syrup, and pectin. The guide doesn't list exact ratios, but it does give us a clue. Ingredient lists rank ingredients by weight, so it's fair to assume that sugar, blackberries, and strawberries are doing the heavy lifting.

The smoothie should be pretty easy to replicate. Frozen blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries are easy enough to find in the store. Boysenberries are harder to come by (unless you happen to live near Buena Park, California, where Knott's Berry Farm hosts its annual boysenberry festival). You can probably skip them — along with the citric acid and pectin.

Yes, the berry smoothie is pretty sugar-heavy: a ½ cup serving contains 16 grams. While some of that probably comes from fruit, you can always avoid adding extra sugar if you want to cut back. Personally, I plan to try the recipe sugar and all — if only for the sake of nostalgia.