Costco Is Cracking Down On Non-Members In Its Food Court

The Costco hot dog is a treat that evokes memories of makeshift concession stands at high school gyms during basketball games where the teens are too busy flirting with each other to ring up your order, or the tents at a charity picnic charging three tickets for a combo meal ("No, the tickets aren't sold here, hon, you have to go buy them at the kiosk near the entrance"). Stationed near the entrance, the Costco food court has always promised all the deliciousness and none of the fuss of actually trying to make it through the store, spending your Saturday navigating aisles with a Zamboni-sized cart.

But now the Instagram account @costcodeals (unaffiliated with Costco) has some news for us:

The story caught fire over the weekend, and seemingly every local news outlet has begun prematurely mourning the loss of these beloved low-cost hot dogs and pizza slices. And while no outlet appears to have heard back from Costco about its requests for comment on this development, the @costcodeals account seems quite defensive of the measure: "To us it makes complete sense! Not sure why it's taken Costco so long to implement...I mean you have to have a membership for gas...." As SFGate points out, it's technically always been a rule that members are the only ones who should be taking advantage of Costco's food court deals, but it sounds like the wholesale giant is going to begin enforcing those rules by checking membership cards.

March 16 sure sounds like an oddly specific start date for policy enforcement. And whatever the reason behind it, that still gives all of us non-members three more precious weeks to indulge in $1.50 hot dogs.