Costco Shoppers Bash High Prices On Lobster Tails And Crab Legs
Special occasion shopping can undoubtedly be, in a word, pricey. Especially during the holidays, when you want to splurge on things you don't eat most of the year, such as rib roasts and expensive caviar. One category of food many of us don't mind dropping some cash on around the holidays is seafood, namely pricey shellfish like lobster and king crab, which is why people like to pick it up from warehouse clubs like Costco, where you can receive bulk pricing. That's not something you can get at most retail outlets.
Instagram influencer @costcohotfinds recently posted a video showing the shellfish options in a freezer case at Costco, which included crab legs and lobster tails, and users were quick to jump on one particular price tag they noticed. A single case of red king crab legs and claws was displayed at $329.99, which caused some social media users sticker shock. One user responded, "In this economy? Be for real." Another said, "Lolololol is Costco kidding with those prices."
There's one detail about Costco's crabs and lobsters that Instagram users missed
As hard as it is to look at a price tag of $329.99 for anything food-related, nobody in the comments section of the video seemed to acknowledge the size of the box. It's a 10-pound box of crab, which brings the price per pound of king crab legs and claws down to $32.99. The smaller, more manageable packages of king crab in the video are priced at $34.99 per pound. While we can all agree that king crab isn't cheap, look at it from this perspective — at a premium steakhouse in Chicago, a single pound of king crab legs goes for $160.
The better bet in the Costco display is the lobster tails, which are $249.99 for a 10-pound case, or $26.99 per pound for the smaller family-sized packages. Yes, that's expensive too. But again, these are luxury ingredients, and prices can fluctuate depending on demand, the size of the respective shellfish population, and even global politics. $329.99 might be a hard price to swallow, but in the scheme of things, it's nothing new. Lobster and crab have always been expensive.