How A Costco Customer Snagged Beef Back Ribs For 40 Cents
Grocery store bargain hunters, a new hero has arrived. It always pays to look closely at price tags, as a major retailer's labeling snafu could add massive savings to your shopping cart. An eagle-eyed Costco shopper did just that this weekend, and their reward was a package of Costco beef back ribs for a steal. If this is the same meat used for Costco's pre-made rib dishes, then this shopper is in for a delicious dinner!
A Redditor known as @Loose_Tumbleweed_631 shared his bounty in the r/Costco subreddit, complete with a photo showing that the pack of ribs was priced at 40 cents. Bear in mind that these ribs usually go for $4.49 per pound — honestly, not a bad deal to begin with. "Found this huge back rib labeled at 0.09 pounds under all the $20 – $30 ones!" our triumphant shopper shared. Indeed, the package clearly contains more than roughly a tenth of a pound of meat but must have been weighed incorrectly.
How does one keep their cool when confronted with such a spectacular pricing error in their favor? Two words: self-checkout. The smart Costco clubber simply scanned the ribs themselves and made it out the door without any staff flagging the obvious error.
Costco is known for affordable meat
Judging from this subreddit's comments, finding mispriced meat has become an amateur sport for Costco shoppers in the know. The big box retailer is known for quality meat at affordable prices overall (viva the $1.50 food court glizzy), though some finds require more human interaction than others.
Costco utilizes on-site butchers to provide cleaner cuts of USDA prime beef to its shoppers. While buying meat in bulk may give a cost-conscious consumer sticker shock, the savings come by the pound. Just be sure to properly portion and freeze any leftover uncooked meat for future meals. (The Takeout pro tip: You can also freeze leftover Costco muffins.)
Those Costco butchers are also key to scoring a great deal on ground beef. You've likely seen those big, paper-wrapped tubes of meat in a supermarket's meat or deli section. That tube is called a chub. Asking the Costco butcher for a "chub of meat" will yield 10 pounds of wrapped ground beef, versus the 5-pound versions ready to go in the meat case. It may be an awkward word to ponder saying out loud, but your reward will be a huge amount of beef for burgers or tacos at a very wallet-friendly price.