OrangeCounty Gal

The story of the Costco founder threatening the CEO to not raise the price of the Costco hot dog is quite an interesting one. In 2018, it was revealed that when current CEO Craig Jelinek approached the co-founder Jim Sinegal about raising the price of the hot dog, Sinegal told him, "If you raise the [price of the] effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out." This exchange has become somewhat of a legend and demonstrates the company's commitment to keeping prices low for their customers. In fact, the price of the hot dog and soda combo has remained at $1.50 since 1985. To maintain this low price, Costco even went as far as to build their own hot dog factory in Los Angeles in 2009, and later another one in Chicago. This allowed them to reduce production costs and continue offering the hot dog at the same low price. So, it seems that the threat of the founder was quite effective in keeping the price of the hot dog down. Who knew that a simple hot dog could be so important to a company's identity and customer loyalty?