Discontinued Costco Grocery Products We Probably Won't Get Back

There's a clever reason why Costco does not label its aisles: It creates a built-in element of discovery. That way its customers, or rather members paying for the privilege of shopping there, wander the vast, warehouse-style store, check out the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and stumble upon an interesting item or two to purchase that they didn't initially intend to buy. That adds up to big bucks for Costco, but also some wonderful prizes and treasures for shoppers. Some of those products, many sold under Costco's in-house Kirkland Signature brand, earn a loyal following over time for their quality and value, and those things keep customers coming back to the store to buy them, trip after trip, year after year.

But as much as Costco likes to introduce its members to new products, it is persistently clearing away shelf, fridge, and freezer space for new, exciting, bargain-priced bulk items. For a variety of reasons, the store chain will suddenly get rid of products that it has carried for years and then publicly say nothing or nearly nothing about it, leaving its customers disappointed. Here are some of the most noticeably missing and deeply missed discontinued products to ever once grace a Costco warehouse that are pretty unlikely to ever make a comeback, based on our research.

Under its Kirkland Signature private label brand, Costco sells big boxes of Protein Bars. Thick, dense, and packed with lots of fiber and whey protein isolate, but very little sugar, these reasonable imitations of the name-brand PowerBar are commonly available in single-flavor quantities or in variety boxes that may include styles like Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chocolate Brownie, Cookies and Cream, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Chunk. They're so popular with customers that they can even be purchased outside of Costco, at Amazon. That is a lot of product variance, especially for Costco, which often will only sell a limited number of options of a product.

Lost in the shuffle is another, misbegotten protein bar flavor: Cinnamon Roll. In 2014, Costco shoppers on a Red Flag Deals forum discussed how the item had suddenly and quietly disappeared from shelves; the warehouse store chain never officially announced a discontinuation. An employee suggested that the move was temporary, and that the sweet-cinnamon-flavored, breakfast treat-approximating meal replacement bar would return soon, perhaps in a variety pack. Four years later, they had not come back yet, and, as of 2024, they are still, sadly, not available.

Bud Light, historically one of the best-selling beers in the United States, is made in the lager style, which results in a light, slightly sweet flavor profile and a relatively low 4.2% alcohol by volume. In the 2010s, Costco introduced a beer under its Kirkland Signature house brand with the exact same scientific, nutritional, and flavor makeup as Bud Light, clearly intending to offer its member-customers a low-cost alternative to the popular brew. There are hidden brands behind Costco products, including beer, and one of the company's contracted industrial breweries churned out Kirkland Signature Light Beer. It reportedly tasted a whole lot like Bud Light but at a staggeringly low cost: By the 2010s, a box of 48 cans of 12-ounce beers could be had for about $22 at most Costco stores.

Despite the familiar flavor and price that made it cheaper than soda or water, beer lovers did not get on board. "Truly absolutely awful," wrote one not-convinced reviewer on RateBeer. "It is a shame they even put the word beer on the can," read another critique on Beer Advocate. Luckily, Costco discontinued Kirkland Signature Light Beer sometime in 2018.

Costco aims to be all things to all people, and while it sells a lot of Food Court items that are wildly unhealthy and truckloads of baked goods and fried frozen foods, it also allows customers to stock up on objectively nutritious meal foundations with a long shelf life if stored in their freezers. In the 2010s, Costco built up a solid fan base for its store-branded Kirkland Signature Turkey Burgers. As unadorned and unpretentious as a product could possibly be, the "premium extra-lean all-natural" turkey patties sold out of the frozen section came 12 to a bag, were not laced with any kind of strong seasoning, and contained just 200 calories and 6 grams of fat each while also including a massive 35 grams of protein. They just needed to be heated up, slapped into a bun, and a quick meal was ready to go.

When Costco discontinued the Kirkland Signature Turkey Burgers around 2017, some customers were so upset that they started a petition on Change.org asking for their reinstatement. It did not work. As of 2024, Costco sells only one kind of turkey burger, a $100-plus package of antibiotic-free poultry patties.

The bakery section at Costco is something to behold — tables, shelves, and refrigerated cases stocked tall and deep with big packages of ready to eat breads, pies, pastries, and cakes. For years, one of the signature offerings of the Costco bakery was its patriotic and leadingly named All-American Chocolate Cake. A grand centerpiece for any table-scape or celebration, this towering, three-layer round cake weighed 7 pounds, with seemingly most of that heft dedicated to chocolate. It was made up of moist chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting in between its layers, then covered with more chocolate frosting, and then decorated with jagged flakes of thin chocolate candy. And while resembling an intricately prepared item from a specialty bakery, it was priced at just under $17, a true bargain at the value-oriented warehouse store.

COVID-19 with its lockdowns, economic fallout, altered demand for consumer goods, and even shoppers ditching their primary grocery stores during the pandemic, led to some fundamental changes in the way food sellers did business. All those concerns prompted Costco to stop baking and selling the All-American Chocolate Cake, one of its bigger and pricier baked items, at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Four years later, other chocolate cakes are ready to purchase at Costco, but not the All-American Chocolate Cake.

For decades, fresh muffins presented in clamshell plastic packaging were a staple of the Costco baked goods section. Perfect for feeding large families or a welcome addition to a work function, those over-sized muffins most recently came in at least five varieties: banana nut, apple crumb, vanilla chocolate chunk, poppy seed, and double chocolate. The labels and signs may say "muffin," but they were really more of an individually-sized, round-shaped piece of unfrosted cake. And instead of selling variety packs with numerous flavors represented, Costco let customers choose which two they wanted. The standard price for the baked treats was $9.99 for 12 muffins, sold in two six-packs of single-flavor plastic containers.

In October 2024, Costco got rid of all five of those classic muffin flavors as well as its usual pricing arrangement, bringing in four new varieties that cost customers a little bit more. The double chocolate muffin was excised in favor of a triple chocolate muffin; the apple crumb disappeared, replaced with a butter pecan muffin topped with a sweet cinnamon crumble. Rounding out the new line: lemon raspberry and streusel, and blueberries and cream. Now the muffins come packed in single-flavor containers of eight muffins costing $6.99.

Those who are just thirsty in general or who have a giant second fridge that they can stock with just drinks favor Costco for its wide array of bottled beverages sold in bulk. Amidst all the individually portioned bottles of waters and sports drinks, and cans of soda and energy drinks, Costco offered a flavorful, caffeinated alternative in Kirkland Signature Diet Green Tea. Some plastic wrapping loosely held together 35 recycled plastic half-liter bottles of a blend of delicately flavored green tea, citrus flavoring agents, and non-nutritional sweetener. Free of sugar and virtually free of calories, the Kirkland Signature Diet Green Tea was a ready-made, cold-serve version of hot green tea, like that which could be made from Costco's Kirkland Green Tea Bags, a perfect tea for beginners.

Suddenly, Costco pulled its house-branded Kirkland Signature Diet Green Tea bottle packs off the shelves in 2018, or rather it just did not stock them anymore. "There is a quality control issue from the manufacturer," one authoritative Reddit user claimed at the time. "Once it is rectified the tea will return to [stores] once supply returns." More than six years later, the bottled tea favorite is yet to make its return to Costco, indicating that it has been wholly discontinued.

Cheese is forever a crowd-pleaser, and in any of its many forms, it's as versatile as it is creamy, salty, and satisfying. Costco offers and sells lots of cheese, both name brand and under its Kirkland Signature house brand. Throughout the 2010s, it sold a five-pound, plastic-wrapped brick of pasteurized process American cheese, a generic, value-priced version of Kraft Singles. Kirkland Signature Deluxe American Cheese Slices were sold in increments of 120 slices, perfect for a quick, easy, and abundant addition to hamburgers and sandwiches for months on end, if this behemoth was properly refrigerated.

As of 2019, the Kirkland Signature Deluxe American Cheese Slices are available outside of the United States, but not in stateside Costco warehouse stores. According to one self-styled Costco expert on Reddit, the chain experienced significantly falling sales on the product, and it made better financial sense to contract with Kraft and stock that company's product than to continue making its own Kraft Singles clone.

Near the registers at most any Costco store, customers may find themselves tempted to browse the miniature makeshift aisles formed by stacked pallets and boxes of snack foods. This is where Costco offers up huge plastic bags full of seemingly and potentially healthy mixtures of nuts and dried fruits, quick energy-providing, protein and vitamin-packed variations on trail mix. One of the most far-reaching items of this kind ever sold by Costco was the simply and almost self-deprecatingly named Fruit and Nut Medley. A 3½ pound bag, it was almost bursting with 12 ingredients — nuts like peanuts, almonds, and walnuts, and eight different kinds of dried fruit, from ho-hum options like raisins and apples to more exciting items like bananas, strawberries, pineapple, papaya, kiwi, and mango. There was no real theme to the Fruit and Nut Medley besides just offering a lot of different tastes and textures in one place.

Without reason or warning, Costco stopped stocking the Fruit and Nut Medley around 2014. Plenty of other fruit and nut medleys are still up for sale at Costco, just not this Fruit and Medley.

Yet another style of Costco-sold, private label-branded trail or snack mix, fortified with candy, dried fruits, seeds, and nuts, Kirkland Signature Trek Mix appealed to customers who needed quick and portable nutrition or snackers who wanted something somewhat healthy. The Trek Mix included chocolate chips, pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, dried cranberries, and granola clusters made from chia seeds and cinnamon and yet came in relatively low in calories; this is not an example of the often surprisingly dense snack, as it packed a scant 150 calories per serving.

When it stood on Costco shelves in the mid-2010s, Kirkland Signature Trail Mix came in at $7.99 for a 2-pound bag, making it as arguably as inexpensive as it was nutritious. Last spotted and positively reviewed and recommended by Costco members in early 2015, the warehouse store chain discontinued it with little fanfare sometime after that. Many similar products are still around at the warehouse chain, but nothing with quite such a unique mix of unique ingredients.

Comté is an alpine cheese, similar to but somewhat softer than Gruyère, traditionally made in the Jura region of France. It is derived from extremely fresh milk and then aged for many months to impart a strong, savory flavor with notes of fruit and nuts. Whether it is eaten straight out of the package or melted into a fondue, some of the best Comté in the world is made by acclaimed cheesemaker Rivoire-Jacquemin. In 2016, Costco began to import this Comté for sale in its stores, co-branded with its house Kirkland Signature label. The kind sold in 1-pound containers to discerning Costco customers and cheese aficionados was aged for eight months for more.

This was ultimately a very special but limited time offer. Costco gave no announcement when it stopped selling Kirkland Signature French Comté  around 2018. Members who had enjoyed the cheese for two years passed around an online petition on Change.org seeking its restoration, but nothing came of that. That was six years ago, and if the cheese has not come back yet, it is unlikely to ever return.

Costco customers who do a lot of home baking can rely on the membership warehouse store for lower per-unit costs on the raw materials they need, buying supplies like flour, sugar, and chocolate chips in bulk. One such product in this vein: Kirkland Signature Chocolate Chips, sold in both a semi-sweet and semi-sweet 51% chocolate variety. The products were clearly designed to compete with and comparable to widely available name-brand chocolate chips made by industry leader Nestlé.

In summer 2024, both styles of store-brand, high-quality chocolate morsels suddenly disappeared from Costco stores nationwide, with actual Nestle chips in their usual spots in the baking aisle. A Costco customer and frequent Kirkland Signature Chocolate Chip buyer contacted the warehouse chain's customer service department and received an email confirming the switch and de facto discontinuation of the house-brand chocolate. "We have made the decision to discontinue the Kirkland Signature Chocolate Chips across the company due to the rising costs of cocoa," the Costco representative explained in an email, (via Reddit). "Cocoa costs have risen near 200% compared to last year and this is impacting all items in this category." It is more efficient for Costco to stock the real Nestlé chips instead of its own, a situation the store company thinks will be the case for around one year. "But our long term plan is to offer the item again in the near future," the letter explained.

Of the many breads sold in loaf form available at most any Costco in the United States, the store's Kirkland Signature Country French Bread was among its most liked and most purchased, as evidenced by its presence on the chain's shelves for many years. Two loaves of the crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, rustic-style bread — finished with authentic-looking baker-made X's on the top and a dusting of fine flour — cost $5.99, comparable to a single unit of packaged, mass-produced bread sold at a national supermarket. Shoppers loved it and came to count upon its availability. "Kirkland Country French may be the best bread I've eaten in my entire life," one fan raved on Reddit in early 2024.

Just a few months later, news began to travel through Costco frequent customer circles in July 2024 that the bulk store was getting rid of its Kirkland Signature Country Bread, effective immediately. "I was in my local Costco in Illinois and I was asking for a freshly made loaf. I told the employee how much I loved it, and she told me they are not going to be carrying it anymore," exclaimed one shopper on Reddit. "Can confirm. I heard the same thing today in California," another person said.