Costco Vs Starbucks Breakfast Sandwich: Which Is Better?
Oh, Starbucks Double-Smoked Bacon, Cheddar, and Egg Sandwich, how sweet thy name is. How tasty thy sandwich is. Surely, another breakfast sandwich could never hope to compete against thee ... right? But hark, one has. And the breakfast Macduff to this brunch Macbeth is Costco's Kirkland Breakfast Sandwich. It debuted at the end of last year, and although its price was met with mixed reviews from Reddit (with some claiming it was to expensive to be considered a bargain), pretty much no one has been complaining about its taste — a taste that features bacon, egg, and cheese stuffed between two croissant buns and eerily resembles Starbucks' very own famed breakfast sandwich. We, and fellow Costco shoppers, believe the warehouse retailer may be plotting to use its Kirkland Breakfast Sandwich to take over the Starbucks' sandwich's mantel as the most delicious-tasting breakfast sandwich in town. But today, we're seeing if Starbucks' breakfast sandwich monarchy is really in danger of being overthrown.
We bought a Starbucks sandwich and a package of Costco's Kirkland Breakfast Sandwiches. We prepared one of Costco's breakfast sandwiches to tasty perfection by following its microwave re-heating instructions down to the second, and then we compared the two items on price, size, bacon, egg patty, cheese, and taste (more on how we did that later) to decide which deserves a breakfast sandwich encore. Read on for the results.
Price
You're hungry. You love fanciful croissant breakfast sandwiches. You are on a budget. So then, which of these two breakfast sandwiches should you go for? Let's break the costs down on these two items -– and we mean, like, all the way down. Remember that price does vary by region, so we're just giving a general idea of how differently these two breakfast sammies affect your wallet.
So at face value, a lone breakfast sandwich from Starbies cost us $5.81. And while a single box of Costco's suspiciously similar pre-made breakfast eat put us back by $19.89, that same package came with eight ready-to-eat sammies waiting for us to unwrap for a delicious start to our day. So while some Reddit users were upset by how pricey the Costco sandwiches were, Kirkland's sandwiches cost about $2.49 a pop — which is literally half the price of Starbucks' version.
Truly coming through for us all during a time of rampant inflation, the Kirkland Breakfast Sandwich is definitely one of the food items you can save on by shopping at Costco.
Size
So it should come as no surprise that Costco does not skimp on the size of its breakfast sandwiches. After all, this is the same store that sold 5-pound mashed potato tins for Thanksgiving last year. In fact, while Starbucks reports its version of the sandwich weighs in at 148 grams and Costco notes a serving of its breakfast croissant masterpiece comes in at 137 grams, we have to say, side-by-side comparisons reveal that the two were nearly identical. And interestingly enough, we even found that if you line up the buns from the two sandwiches, they pretty much have the same circumference. However, despite weighing less, Costco's breakfast sandwich actually appears to be ever so slightly bigger than Starbucks' version when you put them next to each other.
But doesn't Costco's version weigh less? Yes, that's true, but we believe that this is because Costco's croissant-y buns are not only slightly larger than the ones on Starbucks sandwiches, but they are also fluffier — meaning lighter. And the egg in Costco's version is also a lot less dense than the one on Starbies' sandwich. And so, Costco's Kirkland Breakfast Sandwich wins the size category.
Buns
In the great words of Sir Mix-a-Lot, we "don't want none unless you got (tasty) buns, hon." But remember, the buns on these two breakfast sammies aren't your run-of-the-mill stuff of biscuits. Instead, they feature spiraled croissants (like the croissant buns that Aldi used to sell and that foodies still long for). But as fancy as that sounds, which of these two sandwiches, then, has the crunchier, more buttery, more croissant-like bread base?
We started things off strong by trying Starbs' version of the spiral croissant bun. In one word? Buttery. In three? Buttery, crunchy delight. We found that this bread's amazingly crisp texture and savory butter-filled taste reminded us of an actual croissant that had taken on a delectable round, breakfast sandwich form. Then, we bit into Costco's version.
We'd like to start off by saying that the Costco sandwich's croissant bread is not bad by any means. It's wonderfully fluffy and tastes bakery fresh — which is quite the feat considering it's literally a pre-cooked frozen food. However, Kirkland's Breakfast Sandwich bread wasn't particularly crispy or buttery. In fact, if the brand didn't spell out on the box that its sandwich utilizes croissant buns, we probably would not have guessed the sammie's bread was remotely related to the famous pastry. Thus, for its far more croissant-like buns, Starbucks wins this round — along with Sir Mix-a-Lot's approval.
Bacon
There is only one way to eat bacon, and that's extra crispy. However, tragically, while the bacon in both breakfast sandwiches was composed of high-quality enough meat (we weren't biting into fat at every corner), neither Costco nor Starbucks got the bacon-should-be-eaten-crispy memo. Yep, after tasting the bacon from both brands, we found Costco and Starbucks were both failing pretty hard in the crunchy bacon department — but one sandwich's bacon was slightly crunchier than the other's.
While tasty with a great salt flavor, Costco's bacon strands (which are located under the egg) are pretty much limp from beginning to end. But Starbucks' bacon (which is located on top of the egg — trust us, that detail will be important later) is crispy on the edges, which does, admittedly, provide a nice texture contrast to its chewy middle and make for a flavorful bacon-munching experience.
Would the bacon on Costco's breakfast sandwich dupe be crispier if we'd used an air fryer to prep it? Maybe. But as we prepared it, its bacon's crispy factor lost the mediocre battle to the ever so slightly crunchier power of the Starbucks version.
Egg patty
And now we come to perhaps one of the most controversial parts of any pre-assembled breakfast sandwich — the egg patty. Often fried high school cafeteria-style and only tolerable because it is topped off with some bacon and cheese, the egg in ready-to-eat breakfast sandwiches (excluding the Egg McMuffin, which is a tasty exception) is one of those things everyone has come to accept as just going to taste very ... fine. And that's for sure the case with the Starbucks breakfast sandwich's egg.
Starbs' fried egg has that usual, low-quality, preservative-filled taste and texture. And, as we mentioned before, the egg is very dense, which contributes to it having a powdery mouthfeel. That is to say that Starbs' egg is not great. But it's not insufferable either. It is just there to get the egg job done. However, the taste of the Costco sandwich's fried egg was a surprise -– a pleasant one at that. The Kirkland sammie's egg patty tasted wonderfully natural. It's a lot less dense and much fluffier than Starbs' version. And, while Costco's egg patty wasn't seasoned and did not have a particularly outstanding taste (that's what the bacon and cheese is there for, after all), Costco's much more egg-that-came-from-a-chicken quality patty makes it the champion of the epic breakfast sandwich egg-off of 2024.
Cheese
Okay, so, about the cheese — from the very beginning of our taste test, we had some major questions about the cheese stuffed in Kirkland's Breakfast Sandwich. Costco does not proudly display on the product's box that this breakfast eat has cheddar cheese in it or any other specific type of cheese, for that matter. Costco just states the sandwich comes with a cheese of some variety — which is kind of like a man in a trench coat selling several watches saying, "Hey, just trust me on this one."
Upon further inspection of Kirkland breakfast sandwich's ingredients list, we found that Costco's breakfast eat comes with pasteurized blended cheddar cheese. And yes, the Costco sandwich's cheese does taste like it has a worrying amount of adjectives in front of its name. Costco's loosely cheddar-esque cheese reminds us of the pre-sliced stuff Kraft sells (which isn't actually cheese, by the way). Plastic-like and kind of dull, the cheese was for sure the Kirkland Breakfast Sandwich's weakest ingredient, we believe.
On the other hand, Starbucks proudly boasts its sandwich uses sharp cheddar. It tastes like it was made with cheese that comes from cows and not a factory. With a divine sharp tinge you expect from eating sharp cheddar, someone should get Starbucks' breakfast sandwich a camera because it wins the cheesin' category.
Taste
So then, which of these two croissant-meets-bacon-and-cheese sammies is more likely to take you on a one-way trip to flavor-town? Remember when we mentioned that these sandwiches place their bacon and cheese in different spots? That little tidbit proved to make all the difference in taste.
Let's start with Costco, which hides its less crispy bacon and more-or-less-cheddar cheese (?) behind its beautiful, fluffy, fried egg. This sandwich was all about the fluff factor. The viral croissants buns were voluptuous and melted in our mouth, and the egg was just as delightfully puffy. As for the bacon and cheese — well, they were swallowed whole by the said fluffy egg they were nestled under. We didn't really get much of these two flavors until around the sammie's midpoint, making this less of a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich and more like an extra fluffy egg and croissant sandwich.
But then, there was Starbucks. The brand placed its crispy-edged bacon and sharp cheddar cheese above the egg, which made all the difference in taste. From the first bite, we were flooded with intense bacon, cheddar, and croissant flavors. While the sammie's egg wasn't outstanding, it was doing what an egg patty should do –- acting as flavor and texture backup. And Starbucks' breakfast sandwich's crisper, denser, and more savory croissant buns kicked the whole eat off. Do we even have to tell you, then, that Starbucks' sandwich is the winner of this breakfast taste test?
Starbucks still rules the breakfast sandwich
All right, all right -– the winner is Starbucks. Please put down the pitchforks. When a discount brand is better than the original, we're very pleased to admit it. We swear we weren't blinded by brand loyalty here. No, we were simply impressed with the deliciousness of Starbucks' Double-Smoked Bacon, Cheddar, and Egg Sandwich. While Starbucks' breakfast sandwich lost out in the price, egg, and size categories, it brought the breakfast treat heat.
Yes, Costco's fluffy factor in both its surprisingly high-quality egg patty (which was seriously one of the best egg patties we've ever tried) and its delightful doughy viral croissant buns was delicious, it failed in balancing its — uh — somewhat questionable ingredients (yes, we are talking about the cheese). And although high-quality, its croissant buns were more like brioche bread.
However, where Costco failed, Starbucks shined. Its ingredients were well placed and well balanced, and its viral croissant buns were as buttery, flaky, and crispy as the real thing, making for a breakfast sandwich filled with crispy-edged bacon, sharp cheddar, and savory croissant flavor atop an okay-enough egg patty from beginning to end of the eating process. So while much more expensive than the Costco version, Starbucks' breakfast sandwich proves that the best-tasting things in life (and at breakfast) come from splurging on a lil' treat before work.
Methodology
To show you we know our stuff, please allow us to explain our ranking process. To ensure we were tasting everything accurately, we separated every ingredient we judged from both sandwiches. That way, we could properly discern how it tasted on its own. Then, once we'd tried all of the parts individually, we tasted each sandwich as it was originally assembled — cheese, eggs, bacon, and all — to judge how well the ingredients worked together. And the results informed the ranking now neatly laid out before you.