Costco Vs Sam's Club: Which Store Has The Best Meat Department?

When it comes to warehouse meat departments, Costco seems uniquely stocked to satisfy every hunger a dedicated meat eater could imagine. But Sam's Club is no small shakes when it comes to a satisfying meat department, either; with aisles of beef, poultry, and specialty selections available, it's a veritable wonderland of fresh-cut possibilities. Though these two warehouse meat departments may appear similar at first sight, there are distinct differences that give one location an advantage over the other. This back and forth between the two can make it challenging to know which is superior, and lingering myths about Costco meat don't help matters.

Calling on my previous practices as a carnivore to discern the differences between these two power warehouse providers, I put on my investigative journalist hat, made a journey into both stores — which happen to be less than a mile from each other in my town — and did a deep dive into the details. The results are a neck-and-neck exploration of how Costco and Sam's Club meat departments cover your carnivorous needs, and which warehouse does it better. From whether Sam's Club sells the best steaks and roasts around to the extensive range of fish and seafood Costco keeps in cold storage, the results provide a lot to chew on.

My stop at Sam's Club revealed that the warehouse offers enormous 10-pound chubs of 90% lean ground beef, as well as a seemingly endless supply of ground beef in smaller three packs of 88% lean ground beef. You can also find preformed patties of prime rib in slider and full-size rounds. Highlights of the sliced beef selections include packages of angus, cowboy and ribeye steaks; just about every roast imaginable; and pre-seasoned corned beef and cubed meat ready for stewing. There's even a prime section with grass-fed tenderloin steaks and organic ground beef for the connoisseurs to enjoy. For discount shoppers, there's also a clearance section where the meat appears to be ready to use immediately, with a "use or freeze by" date that reflects the current date upon my visit. I'm not sure I'd recommended it, but if you plan to prepare it right away, it might do the job.

Costco offers a meaty collection of beef items for customers to slice into as well. Readily available 88% lean Kirkland ground beef can be had for $4.59 per pound, while the steaks and roasts went a bit further than Sam's Club's collection offering flank steak and tri-tip; a prime beef section with highly marbled New York strip and grass-fed strip loin. The longer I strolled through the Costco meat section, the more voluminous the beef options seemed, which definitely tilted the scales in the direction of this warehouse. 

In the beef arena, Costco covers a heartier array of cuts and creations than Sam's Club.

The options for chicken shopping at Sam's Club run the gamut from whole legs, thighs, and breasts to skinless boneless breasts and entire hens ready for the roaster or fryer. Costco mirrors Sam's when it comes to the variety of chicken cuts, with equal packages of fryers and grillers displayed, as well as full-size hens. Costco goes a step further with organic chicken drumsticks, chicken tenderloins and chicken breasts available from Kirkland, and even offers party wings to reduce customer's kitchen work for game day. Aside from the quantity of pieces per package, neither warehouse goes above and beyond what you can find in a decent grocery store.

Turkey is in short supply at both warehouses, though Costco offers ground turkey from both Butterball and Fulton Farms, while Sam's Club sticks with Jennie-O only. You won't find whole turkeys or turkey breast at either Costco or Sam's Club until the holiday season rolls around. Then, both locales carry frozen turkeys, while Costco also offers pre-cooked turkeys.

When the feathers stop flying and the dust settles, both Costco and Sam's Club perform admirably in the chicken fight for poultry supremacy.

Shopping for pork at Costco means taking your pick of pretty much every cut imaginable. The warehouse has pork loin back, boneless top loin chops, boneless sliced pork belly, and pork shoulder country-style ribs on display. I also found boneless pork loin and unsliced pork belly in stock, which means that aside from the exotic parts, the offal, and the tail, almost every pork cut possible is represented in the Costco meat department — and in forms that inspire grand dreams of grilling something significant beyond the usual beef dishes.

Sam's Club has a little trouble keeping up, but does an okay job with ribs, pork belly, butt, loin, and chops, all packaged up and ready to be tossed into the oven or the smoker. With pork being the third-most popular meat in the U.S., Sam's seems to hedge its bets a bit rather than overstocking cuts it can't sell through.

For pork fans looking to maximize a barbeque or for home cooks looking to make hearty Sunday dinners for their families, Costco comes out on top for prime pork-buying potential.

Lamb has always struck me as a specialty meat, arriving at my childhood table only in pork chop form, though shoppers at both Costco and Sam's Club have a slightly larger array of cuts to choose from. Costco comes up with chops, boneless legs, ribs and shoulder cuts to give gourmets an affordable edible canvas to work with.

Sam's Club has a similar selection of whole cuts, though it's slightly more limited than what Costco offers, sticking with racks and loin chops only. The one step Sam's takes that Costco misses is to carry ground New Zealand lamb, a move that might encourage modest cooks to step out of their comfort zone and whip up lamb burgers, homemade sausage, or meatballs to spice up the menu. It could be one of the more underrated Sam's Club item shoppers love if they're open to making the discovery.

Though neither store is entirely sheepish about stocking this savory alternative to beef or pork — with such restricted options from both warehouses in the lamb category — it's a total toss-up between Costco and Sam's Club. You can find workable selections at similar prices in both locations, keeping the playing field relatively level. 

Maybe it's due to the mindbogglingly expensive rare liquors found at these warehouses, but I was expecting a deep trove of pricey game and other specialty meats to be on display in both warehouse meat departments. This is what I get for sticking to the produce section for so many years. The stark truth was that Sam's Club had no game in its game. It may have just been the season or the fact that my location isn't in a big game area, but having a pheasant or a package of elk steaks didn't seem outside the realm of possibility. Apparently, I'm the only one who thinks so.

Costco doesn't fare much better in its rare meat shopping arrangements, though I was able to find packages of 90% lean ground bison in 2.5 pound cubes for 20.99 per pound. That seems pretty pricey for ground meat, though bison is something of a specialty. It was restricted to a tiny sliver of the beef case, but it seemed to attract a fair amount of attention while I was shopping, from more than just my prying eyes and photo-snapping phone.

If you're looking for game meat beyond bison, neither Costco nor Sam's Club is bound to bag a winning catch.

Sam's Club carries far more fish items than I was expecting, though I'm not sure why I limited my imagination to just the basic smoked salmon. Maybe too many stops at the deli section trained my brain for low expectations. But there are plenty of wrapped packages with steelhead trout, ahi tuna steaks and chunks, halibut, and Chilean seabass to be found too. Shoppers who love prepared dishes can pick up seafood charcuterie boards, and the shellfish fans are in for a treat with jumbo and black tiger shrimp nestled next to crab legs.

As impressive as Sam's Club's edible aquarium is, Costco makes a bigger splash with its ocean's worth of fish and seafood possibilities. Atlantic salmon, farm-raised catfish fillets, and sockeye salmon share the case with whole versions of branzino and tilapia. There was also a bounty of shellfish, including warm-water lobster tails, Dungeness crab sections and nets of farm-raised littleneck clams. Packages of whitehead shrimp were on special for $5.00 off per package when I was there — an example of the discounts Costco tosses out to entice wide-eyed shoppers.

If you're looking for a haul of fresh and saltwater seafood, Costco lets you cast a wider net than Sam's Club.

Anyone who's tried to shop for anything on Costco's websites knows how severely limited the company keeps their website stock. It's a challenge to do simple price checks on current items, let alone arrange a full shopping list knowing what you'll be paying. But it's an entirely different set of obstacles shopping online for Costco meat. All selections shown are super premium brands in larger-than-average quantities, priced well over $100.00 per selection. Sure, you can get a wagyu tenderloin roast for $999.99, but if you're a home shopper looking to stock your freezer for the week, you're sadly out of luck.

In stark contrast, Sam's Club targets the weekly shopper with a family to feed and creates a digital replica of the store meat department where everything is sensibly sized and reasonably priced. Part of this is due to the company's Scan & Go feature, which lets you arrange and pay for your order through the app, then sweep into the store, scan your items, and cruise home without having to stop at the check stand. It's the future for shopping in general, and Sam's factors its meat selections into the process, a concept Costco hasn't latched onto yet.

If shopping in the warehouse meat department online is your slice of heaven, count Sam's Club as the winning option.

There's an ongoing conversation about whether Kirkland or Member's Mark items are better, a debate that stretches from one end of the warehouse world to the other. The meat department isn't exempt from the argument, and having a deep trove of meat-based items to offer from both brands helps the companies capture the hearts and dollars of their own devoted audiences. But whether you love Costco meat over Sam's Club, letting national brands share the case with your home label gives a store a distinct advantage with brand-loyal shoppers.

Who does a better job addressing the expectations of its meat shoppers when it comes to signature selections versus national names? Sam's Club features well-known meat providers like Hillshire Farms and Jennie-O, while Costco pushes Butterball and Swift, though with both companies, the home brand receives a much bigger push by far. Which of the store labels rates better when the meat hits the fire is entirely a customer-oriented discussion, and having not eaten any of the products in quite some time, I have to settle for store representation as the gauge in this category.

As far as offering a range of store and national brand meat items, Costco and Sam's Club come out even.

I fully expected Sam's Club to beat the feathers off of Costco when it came to meat department prices. After all, it's a Walmart company, which means low prices are practically guaranteed, right? Not in this instance. Side-by-side comparisons from common items like ground turkey, baby back pork ribs, Angus New York strip steak and chuck roast revealed a one-cent difference between the two stores. With such negligible savings, choosing a spot to shop at comes down to personal preference for most of the items.

Where things take a dramatic turn is in the fish and seafood case, where I spotted some overlapping options at Costco nearly double the price of Sam's Club. On my visit, I saw ahi tuna at both locations; Sam's was priced at $8.98 per pound, while Costco rang up a whopping $16.99 per pound. Steelhead trout was priced at $8.99 per pound at Sam's Club and $9.99 per pound at Costco, not quite as drastic but still a motivating factor for anyone doing comparative shopping. This fluctuation can quickly clue you in on which seafood and meats you should and shouldn't buy at Costco. 

Overall, you can do mighty fine shopping for meat at either warehouse with a slight give-and-take price difference, unless you're looking for premium fish selections. In that case, you'd do well to stick with Sam's Club.

While both warehouses provide a plethora of meat-based options for shoppers to choose from, Costco edges out Sam's Club thanks to a broader array of beef and seafood products. I'd never done an in-depth shop of the meat department in either of these stores, so wandering through the cases to see exactly what was in stock was a huge revelation. While Sam's does an admirable job with its offerings and has a slick 21st century app that lets you shop and hop without waiting in line, a trip to Costco is bound to be a more satisfying shopping experience for the average meat-loving customer.

What I found most impressive about Costco was its inclusive array of pork, fish and seafood selections. While it isn't anywhere near exhaustive, it provides an admirable variety of sliced, fileted, and whole fish, something Sam's Club didn't have. I was also surprised to find crab legs and whole shellfish in several forms, something I'd expect at a standard grocery store with potentially more meat department traffic, but not a warehouse where turnover of product isn't guaranteed. And the pork selections were practically snout-to-tail, though whole hogs were notably missing from the case.

That Costco takes extra measures to give its shoppers myriad possibilities for their beef, pork, and seafood dining pleasure, affirms the company's status as the winner of warehouse meat marketing (pun intended).

In order to best decide which of these two meat departments was superior, I made a field trip to both Costco and Sam's Club to investigate. I scanned the meat cases of both warehouses, which happened to be a half a mile apart in my area. This made comparison work easy and also allowed me to do a quick reconnaissance of both stores within a close timeframe. I took notes and snapshots of what both stores offered and compared selection sizes and variety, as well as tracking prices and store versus national brand availability. It was easy to recognize the deeper stock provided by Costco once I had seen both stores in sequence.

Something else I noticed during my field trip: the activity at each warehouse had its own energy level. I started at Sam's, since they opened a half an hour earlier than Costco, and noticed that the meat department was relatively empty except for a few hardcore shoppers doing comparisons that seemed almost as in-depth as mine. Then I moved on to Costco, and within 10 minutes of opening, there was notably more activity in the meat department, with shoppers swooping in and grabbing items they already seemed familiar with, as well as cautious shoppers checking out stock in the game and chicken sections. Maybe it's due to the better selection at Costco. Considering my discoveries while writing the article, I'd say it's a definite possibility.