Costco's Iconic Hot Dog

Around lunch time there are customers who come into Costco just for the hot dog. The hot dog and soda combination costs $1.50, the same price when it was first introduced in 1984. While the direct cost of the material ingredients could possibly be less than $1.50, Costco undoubtedly experiences a loss once one includes Food Court labor, utilities, and the capital cost of the equipment and space.

Instead of a cost-based approach, the Chronicle estimates what the price would be if it had merely kept up with inflation:

What’s still a $1.50 hot dog and soda would be setting you back well over twice as much: $3.96.

..The $1.50 hot dog deal is more about marketing than money-making, said Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Yale Budget Lab.

“There’s so much that is changing right now in our world. Everything feels very uncertain. It sounds kind of silly, but you can rely on the fact that Costco has a hot dog for $1.50,” she said...

It’s still a soda and a hot dog, but the dog is now made by Kirkland Signature instead of Hebrew National. They were first sold at carts, then in an area dubbed “Cafe 150” (named for the price), though it’s now just known as “the Costco food court.”

At one point, the food court sodas at Costco came in cans from vending machines, but Costco switched to fountain soda to save money....And this summer, the retailer shifted from Pepsi back to Coke in yet another cost-saving move.

Even at $3.96 I would still buy the combo, but the $1.50 hot dog and $4.99 rotisserie chicken have become iconic. They're also a lifeline to those on a shoestring budget, so kudos to Costco for holding fast.

Chicken of Choice

(Chronicle photo)

When Boston Chicken (later Boston Market) introduced rotisserie chicken to the masses in the late 1980's, we were frequent patrons of its restaurants. In 1994 Costco began selling a whole rotisserie chicken for $4.99 (a price which hasn't changed for 30 years), and we visited Boston Market much less often. The Costco chicken was juicy, well-seasoned, and cheap; it was a much better value proposition than Boston Market or any other restaurant.

The Chronicle conducted a blind taste test of rotisserie chicken prepared by 17 different Bay Area vendors. How well did the Costco product measure up?

We took note of saltiness, appraised aromatics and analyzed distinguishing seasonings. We loved schmaltzy, crisp skin and abhorred the rubbery ones. We wanted meat rich in moisture and dreaded when a piece was dry...We rated each on flavor, juiciness and skin. A good chicken excels in all of those categories, which influence the judge’s overall score, on a 10-point scale. The findings show that restaurants typically make better chickens than markets and butchers; they often use higher quality birds...

[Costco's] chicken was by far the juiciest, practically dripping with moisture, and stayed warm longest. The value also must be noted: The price disparity between Costco and every other place was cavernous, nearly five to 20 times cheaper than the rest at $1.16 per pound. However, there is one big caveat: The oversized fowl is only available to those with a Costco membership, which starts at $65 per year.

Without considering the cost, Costco's chicken finished second to Rooster’s Peruvian Rotisserie, a restaurant in San Francisco's Mission district. If we happen to be in that area, we'll check out Rooster's. Meanwhile, Costco's second-best offering will do just fine.

If You Pause on the Paws, You'll Probably Miss Out

At Costco every day seems like there's a Presidents' Day sale. This afternoon I saw chicken feet (aka "chicken paws") being sold for $1.99 a pound. I didn't pull the trigger last November when they were $5.49/lb. at 99 Ranch, but $1.99 is awfully tempting and had me web-searching recipes next to the display.

Chicken feet require hours to prepare, so lacking the time to spend in the kitchen I didn't buy any today. I might not get another chance, however, since at that price, likely to be cheaper than their distributors, the local Chinese restaurants may swoop in and clean out the inventory.

Chicken Feet

While shopping at 99 Ranch I passed the display of chicken "paws." The price was $5.49 per pound, and no, I didn't buy any.

My paternal grandmother used to get chicken feet free from the Honolulu Chinatown butchers. When one has to feed nine kids, no part of the animal is wasted.

Grandmother had several go-to recipes. What they all had in common was long hours of cooking. The feet are tough and require heat over an extended period to break down the cartilage.

My father never lost his childhood fondness for chicken feet and would always order a dish at dim sum restaurants. Nostalgia can be a powerful motivator.

Getting Ahead

Bay Area Cantonese restaurants sell half or whole chicken and duck. Although traditionalists prefer to carve the fowl themselves, the restaurants will slice it free upon request.

We bought a whole steamed chicken yesterday, and the restaurant cut the chicken and included its head. Not only does it prove to the customer that he received the entire chicken, but many diners still regard the head as a delicacy.

My father and uncles patiently waited for their kids to serve themselves, knowing that the head would remain untouched. Saving the best for last, they sucked the entire appendage, leaving only the beak and pieces of the skull.

I throw the head into the compost pile. That's one tradition that stopped with the previous generation. Sorry, Dad!

Another Reason the Chicken Crossed the Road

Police Lt. Jonathan Ozol in a SF crosswalk

San Francisco police have a new crime-fighting initiative. They're tagging drivers who don't stop for officers who are dressed as inflatable chickens.

On Monday morning [Sept. 16], San Francisco police Lt. Jonathan Ozol wore a flamboyant, inflatable chicken costume as he attempted to navigate a crosswalk on Alemany Boulevard near the intersection of Rousseau Street. The purpose of the exercise was to issue tickets to drivers who flouted state law by not yielding to a pedestrian like Ozol as he attempted to cross. Quite a few drivers failed that test.

The ostentatious costume, according to police Capt. Amy Hurwitz, serves two purposes. “I don’t want them to get run over,” she told me. “But the costume is so bright, it’s like, how can you miss it?”

...State law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians who are entering a crosswalk. Ozol said that failing to do so can result in a citation that could cost the driver a hefty fine of as much as $400.

...Ozol would attempt to enter the crosswalk, and if a driver didn’t yield and allow him to cross, he would wave at two other officers parked nearby. From there, one of the two officers — one on a motorcycle, and the other in a standard squad car — would follow the flagged driver and pull them over.

The numerous tickets and the irresistible publicity have had the desired effect: drivers are slowing down.

Your humble blogger laughed, too, but I think that those who mock the chicken/Big-Bird costumes as a "stunt" have an anti-SF or anti-police agenda.

Kudos to SFPD for their creativity, and coming up with a strategy that appears to be working.

The Cock of the Walk

In the buildup to the college football national championship tonight, sportswriters are always searching for new angles. Here's one: Michigan coach's Jim Harbaugh's chickens. [bold added]

Harbaugh is a serious backyard chicken farmer.

“Chickens have made the cut into his pretty small circle of important things in his life,” said Jay Harbaugh, his eldest son and the Wolverines’ special-teams coordinator...

The chickens have become a welcome distraction for Harbaugh during a season that’s been full of them. Michigan has faced two separate scandals and NCAA investigations. Harbaugh’s own future in Ann Arbor is once again the subject of speculation, as professional teams with head coaching vacancies curry his favor for the third consecutive winter.

When it seems like everybody’s out to get Michigan (this year’s team has adopted the slogan “Michigan vs. Everybody”), Harbaugh can count on the undying loyalty of his flock. “There’s times when I’m doing good things for other people, and they’re not as happy to see me as my chickens are,” he said in November.

The Harbaugh chicken coop dates back to 2020, when the family purchased seven chicks—one for each of the coach’s children—just before Easter during the early days of the pandemic shutdown.

The jokes write themselves ("cluck management" WSJ drawing, above right).

On a serious note high-powered individuals often find solace in animals, who unlike two-legged creatures, give them unconditional love.

(photo from KJCT8)

Now that Jim Harbaugh's team, the Michigan Wolverines, won the national championship tonight, it's very likely that several billionaire NFL team owners will want him to be their head coach next year.

At the age of 60 he's about to reach his beak.

Chickened Out

The Foodland at the Ala Moana Shopping Center has a large selection of chips, sandwiches, and snacks.

Foodland's target customers are tourists who want to downshift from fancy Waikiki restaurants, as well as snowbirds who want to cook occasionally.

There were boxes of fried chicken skins laid out on a table. I imagine they're similar to fried pork rinds, which have become popular for those who want a tasty, low-carb snack.

At $14.99 a pound the chicken skins weren't moving. It's not a good value for the locals, who know that they can buy an individual chicken dinner for that price. And I suspect that chicken skins are far down the list of Mainlanders' snack preferences.

When I return in February, if the product is still on display I'd be surprised if the price is still up there. At $7 or $8 I'd spring for a box.

Unappetizing Beginning

Looks like chicken (gizzards)

One of the running jokes in our family is how my Caucasian brother-in-law, who grew up eating beef and potatoes, has taken a long time to become acclimated to Asian cuisine. His problem is not so much the spices and flavors but the parts of the animals used in the dishes; when visiting Hawaii he has been taken by surprise more than once.

He let his guard down this week at the popular Side Street Inn near Waikiki. Offered a deep-fried appetizer, he tore into it with gusto...until it was revealed that he was consuming chicken gizzards.

By coincidence we were invited to dinner at the same restaurant tonight. Now eager to try the gizzards, we ordered a plate. To be honest, they were just so-so. The crust was excellent--crispy and not oily--but the insides were a little chewy.

Gizzards are tough and muscular, and I like to simmer them for an hour in garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. My brother-in-law was right to turn to the salads and beef and fish dishes, which were tasty and well-prepared. But I'm not going to admit it to him.

Cocks of the Lots

On the same block as million-dollar houses and condos roam wild chickens. (We've noted them before.)

This empty lot in Waikiki is ripe for building, or perhaps it's owned by a developer who is biding his time, hoping to buy adjacent properties to build something tall.

Construction projects that had been active when I was here in November are being completed; those loans don't extend indefinitely.

Friends and relatives on the Mainland have been shocked at the price of Hawaiian rentals. Tourism is almost back to pre-pandemic levels.

Given construction lead times, owners of empty lots such as this one should be laying the groundwork(!) for a speculative build, but it's not my money and advice is cheap.

Then the chickens will have to find another place to strut.

The Chicken is Very Fresh

....at this Honolulu McDonald's.

Crowing Over a Victory

A problem that bothered some people in San Francisco was solved permanently and didn't cost any money.

"King Henry IV" has lost his Tenderloin perch. (Chron)

The rooster disturbing the Tenderloin has been surrendered to the city [bold added]

The Tenderloin rooster, who had been waking up residents for months with his early morning crowing, no longer lives in the neighborhood after its owner surrendered him Tuesday to Animal Care and Control...

The rooster first started crowing in January, frustrating those living in the nearby apartment buildings. Often times, the crowing was followed by shouts and death threats directed at the rooster. Many cities, like Oakland, have no-rooster rules, but that is not the case in San Francisco.

Put aside San Francisco's homelessness, crime wave, prosecutor recall, school-board controversy, high taxes, labyrinthine regulations, and out-migration.

Take a moment to celebrate a small victory. There, don't you feel better?

Tastes But Doesn't Cost Like Chicken

Costco does demographic analysis on each of its locations.

That's how it suspected that the burgeoning middle-class-to-wealthy Asian population on the mid-Peninsula might be receptive to an expensive drink made of bird saliva. (I haven't seen the beverage for at least a year, but I give them points for trying.)

Nevertheless I was taken aback by this week's offering in the freezer section, a $179.99 box of "chicken essence."

A box of chicken anything that was about the size of a box of Oreos had to confer some kind of benefit beyond taste.

$179.99 buys a lot of Costco rotisserie chicken at $4.99 apiece (36 if you're too lazy even to do division, and now that I'm retired I feel your sloth).

Indeed, Lao Xie Zhen Chicken Essence does have health benefits:

Complete Extraction of Premium Ingredients: free-range second-generation hens whose "essence is 5 times more concentrated."

Tasty and Nutritious: what did you expect them to say? It's also got "premium pork ribs for an enhanced flavour and a boost of collagen."

Recovery From Stress and Mental Fatigue: especially useful for harried young parents. I quaffed Johnnie Walker in my day; don't judge, I'm still here, aren't I?

Replenishes Energy and Strength: we already take supplements for that. If you want to appeal to ABC's (American Born Chinese), tell them they'll lose weight.

Improve Quality of Breast Milk: "chicken essence is more effective than traditional herbal soup to promote quality and quantity in breast milk production." Maybe it doesn't say a lot about traditional herbal soup.

But who am I to mock the expensive but harmless food supplements that others believe in? Every time the household CEO reads a health newsletter, she puts a new item on the list. And so it is that the vitamin drawer now includes glucosamine, chondroitin, turmeric, coenzyme Q10, probiotics, lutein, zeaxanthin, C, D3, and B12. This week I picked up a bottle of collagen to reduce hair loss, wrinkles, and joint pain.

Cumulatively, we spend a lot more than $179.99 a year. P***ing away money has taken on a whole new, literal meaning.

A Bit of His Strut

For at least a decade feral chickens have been annoying Oahu residents. Despite programs to capture them, the problem persists.

One reason Honolulu found it difficult to capture feral chickens was because they would run from city property to state or private property where city-paid staffers aren’t authorized to enter

In the Market City shopping center earlier this month, one bird was the cock of the walk, having no fear of humans or cars.

Back in the 1950's Honolulans would buy chickens live and slaughter them in their back yards. If only a few people still did that, that rooster might lose a bit of his strut.

Tastes Like...

(Chronicle photo)

San Francisco privately owned Eat Just has developed laboratory-grown chicken meat that has been approved in Singapore. [bold added]

The futuristic notion of grocery store butcher cases lined with meat grown in a lab is becoming a reality...

That makes the chicken — created from animal cells instead of a slaughtered bird — from San Francisco’s Eat Just the first of its kind in the world to be approved for sale.

Singapore is the first country to regulate this groundbreaking industry — often referred to as cultured, cell-based or cultivated meat production — and Eat Just’s chicken will debut at a yet-to-be-named restaurant there soon, though the exact timing is unclear. The product cannot yet be sold in the United States.

(WSJ photo)

We are familiar with Eat Just's predecessor company, Hampton Creek, whose plant-based mayonnaise tasted like the real thing. However, Hampton Creek was beset by lawsuits insisting that the product was not "mayonnaise" because, according to Federal regulations, it did not contain egg yolks.

Cultivated meat is yet another origination category that consumers will have to become familiar with, in addition to organic, non-GMO, and plant-based protein.

It's neither fish nor fowl. (Hey, write your own blog.)

The Simpler Life, for a While

(The above WSJ graph shows the percentage year-over-year reduction in the number of varieties per product category.)

May 28: only whole chicken, but at least it's organic

A couple of months ago we observed how only whole chicken was at the time available at Costco; the packages of parts--breasts, wings, drumsticks, and thighs--were nowhere to be found.

But it's not just food; broad sections of the consumer industry are winnowing their product offerings: [bold added]

Some IGA Inc. grocery stores now offer only four choices of toilet paper. A few months ago, before the coronavirus pandemic, IGA’s 1,100 U.S. stores typically carried about 40 varieties.

Harley-Davidson Inc. has cut some models from its motorcycle lineup. Outback Steakhouse has stripped roughly 40% of its menu, is studying whether customers care and may drop some items for good even after the pandemic...

Restaurants are thinning menus as Covid-19 changes how they can seat and serve customers. For years, eateries used new menu items to attract customers. Those often required chains to buy more ingredients and train employees, while complicating customer ordering...

Last year, auto makers built and offered more than 605,000 vehicle configurations even before taking different colors into account, according to industry research firm J.D. Power. In auto showrooms today, U.S. buyers will likely find choices more limited for now because of supply-chain bottlenecks and lower volumes, said Doug Betts, president of the firm’s automotive division...

Consumer choice in meat aisles has narrowed as Covid-19 outbreaks among meatpacking-plant workers in late April forced meatpackers like Tyson Foods Inc., JBS USA Holdings Inc. and Cargill Inc. to temporarily shut plants and allocate workers to lines producing more basic products, meat-company executives have said.

The result in grocery stores has been more bone-in hams and chicken breasts with ribs attached that require less hands-on cutting in plants. Though meat plants have resumed operations, many workers have continued to stay home. “Right now,” said Will Sawyer, economist for agricultural lender CoBank, “the processors are more focused on supply than they are the convenience.”

It does look like we will have to live in a world of fewer choices for a while. That's what happens when it's a supplier's market for an extended period.

When the manufacturers and supermarkets go looking for customers again, the niche offerings will return.

Father's Day, 2020

After being fairly well-behaved, I threw out the healthy-food regimen on Father's Day and went to Jollibee, the Philippine fast-food chain with several outlets in the Bay Area.

It was time for palabok ("a traditional Filipino noodle dish covered in garlic sauce, crushed pork rind, shrimp, and egg"), burger steak smothered in gravy, and fried chicken, which also had gravy on the side.

The family went along, though the dishes aren't their favorites, because it's the one day where the man of the house is still the man of the house.

I'll take an extra Lipitor tonight.

Counting and Carving the Chickens

Only whole chicken, but at least it's organic

Nearly three months ago Costco shoppers picked clean the chicken aisle because of the Fear of Running Out. Recently it looked like FORO had subsided because chicken---not only whole birds but also drumsticks, wings, breasts, and thighs as well as boneless, skinless, organic versions of the same--were back on display.

Over the past week we've noted that only whole chicken was available. That brought back memories of the 1970's and 80's when shoppers bought whole, the same price as two skinless boneless breasts.

Map from meatpoultry.com

As meat processing became more efficient and trustworthy (remember the warnings about salmonella, tapeworm, and mad cow disease?) we lazily began buying only the parts called for in recipes.

The current paucity of chicken parts is likely not due to panic buying but the number of meat- and poultry-processing plants that have closed due to COVID-19.

Now we have to sharpen our knives and bone up on our chicken carving. Gordon Ramsay shows how it's done.

Filling a Need

On the Sandwiches on Sunday menu today, like last March, was chicken and rice. Within that description the preparers had broad latitude. Those who were pressed for time picked up rotisserie chicken from Safeway or Costco. Others spent hours in the kitchen. I was in the latter group.

On Thursday I bought 10 pounds of drumsticks--about 30--from Costco for $12.77 and marinated them in soy sauce and garlic.

The water will be absorbed by the rice

On Sunday morning I spread 10 cups of washed rice into a large roasting pan and poured over a mixture of 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup, water, and grilled onions. Next I browned the drumsticks and covered the pan with foil.

Into the oven for two hours at 325 degrees on timer, et voila! Baked chicken and rice. (The dish can sit in the cooling oven for a couple of hours; it won't overcook.)

The cost of all the ingredients was less than $20, under $1 a serving. The 60 people in line finished everything. As long as there's a need--we've been doing this for 16 years--we'll keep coming back.

San Tung Restaurant

Seafood fried rice and chicken wings

In the evenings there's at least a 30-minute wait for a table at the San Tung restaurant (on Irving, between 11th and 12th). We piggy-backed off of a parking space from a nearby errand and stopped by for a late lunch. There was a small line, and we were seated in less than 10 minutes.

San Tung's signature dish is the fried chicken wings. I'd tried them before and thought they were over-rated. On that occasion the line was out the door, the kitchen was chaotic, and the wings were good but far from special. Now the coating was crisp, the chicken was moist, and the sweet-hot garlicky gingery sauce made me wish that the lunch menu ($9) had more than six wings.

Next time I won't wait a year before coming here again.