Why You (Obviously) Shouldn't Ask The Costco Meat Counter For Free Food
Published 2 months ago• 2 minute read
, this does not include multiple pounds of beef fat.
An employee of a Costco meat department disputed the viral rumor on Reddit. "This is completely false!!! [I]f somebody at his Costco is doing this, they're gonna lose their job. We sell the fat to rendering companies."
Once purchased by rendering companies, Costco's animal fat can become any number of useful items, depending on what the rendering companies produce. This can include biofuel, animal feed, and rendered cooking fats like lard or tallow. One thing Costco's animal trimmings will not be is freebies for your grocery cart.
Regardless of how this false rumor came to be, Costco's practice of selling fat trimmings to rendering companies essentially means the fat has been purchased before consumers can even think to ask for it. This likely means you can't even buy beef fat at Costco, except as a rendered product. And although Costco sells rendered animal fats, they are not made from the meat department's fat trimmings.
For a store with as many deep discounts and loss leaders as Costco offers, along with solid pay and benefits for the employees, every penny on the business backend counts. Even though there may be a consumer market for chunks of beef fat at scale, it is far more efficient for Costco to wring as many dollars out of the animal as possible by selling it to another company.
