The Best Fast Food Dupes You Can Score At Costco

There are certain fast food items that just can't quite be replicated at home — many have tried but nobody has quite cracked the secret behind Raising Cane's iconic Cane's Sauce, for example. Nevertheless, there are certain grocery store products that taste just close enough to their famous counterparts to make for suitable fast food dupes. For connoisseurs of at-home fast food experiences, these dupes can save both time and money compared to relying on the real items from their restaurants of origin.

Few grocery stores offer as copious a selection of fun and interesting foods as Costco. Naturally, then, there are a fair number of quality fast food dupes on the shelves of Costco warehouses. Compiling this list required first identifying as many Costco items as possible that resemble popular foods from fast food chains. Then, anything generally considered to be of a subpar level of quality was eliminated. Based on those simple criteria, the following are the best fast food dupes available in Costco stores.

McDonald's fries are so famously delicious, it's hardly controversial to suggest they're the single most iconic item in all of fast food. With that said, the formula for McDonald's fries is relatively straightforward — they're kinda thin, nicely crisp, and generously salted. For the closest approximation possible of the iconic McDonald's french fry recipe on Costco shelves, try Ore-Ida's bag of frozen Fast Food French Fries.

First of all, it's worth specifying that Costco sells Ore-Ida Fast Food French Fries in weighty 6-pound bags, albeit at a reasonable price point of just under $12. Anyone willing to commit to that many fries will find that they're quite possibly the best McDonald's fry dupe on the market, to the point that customers find them vastly superior in that regard to Costco's Kirkland Signature french fries. "Ore-ida fast food frozen fries are close to McDonald's, even in the oven," wrote one Reddit user, who recommended seasoning them with fine salt to further approximate an authentic McDonald's experience.

French fries aren't the only thing from McDonald's that the Ore-Ida brand has replicated. While not quite as iconic as the fries, the McDonald's hash brown is quite a bit more singular. Whereas standard diner-style restaurants typically serve hash browns in a pile on a plate, the McDonald's hash brown takes the form of a sort of a bar that can be eaten handheld. Ore-Ida has its own take of the classic McDonald's item with its Golden Hash Brown Pattie.

First off, Costco's 6-pound bag of Ore-Ida Fast Food French Fries is outright dainty next to its 16.8-pound frozen Ore-Ida Golden Hash Brown Patties box. This bounty of hash browns will set Costco shoppers back about $34. According to customers familiar with Ore-Ida's product, its hash browns don't just look like its McDonald's counterpart but taste similar too. "We bought a nearly 17 pound box of McDonald's dupe hashbrowns from the business center," wrote a Reddit user. "Honestly, they taste IDENTICAL in the air fryer and they're only 25¢ each, versus $2.99 each at McDonald's."

Synonymous with the chicken sandwich in the world of fast food is Chick-Fil-A. But as streamlined and sandwich-focused as Chick-Fil-A's menu may be, also beloved among the chain's regulars is its chicken nuggets. One product from Costco that shoppers have compared to Chick-Fil-A's nuggets is the Just Bare brand's Lightly Breaded Chicken Breast Chunks.

Costco sells its Just Bare chicken chunks in 4-pound bags — a bulk quantity, to be sure, but quite a bit easier to fit in a freezer than 16 pounds of Ore-Ida hash browns. The fact they're called chicken chunks refers to their more natural form, as opposed to the uniformity of one or a few shapes that typically define chicken nuggets. This is, of course, a hallmark of Chick-fil-A's nuggets, and a key way the Just Bare product approximates its fast food counterpart. "Just Bare is the best premium frozen chicken breast and nuggets you can buy, in my opinion. I find their nuggets to be on par with Chick-fil-A," wrote one Reddit user.

Chick-Fil-A nuggets just aren't complete on their own. Key to any fast food nugget meal is good dipping sauce. The selection of sauces at Chick-Fil-A restaurants is pretty diverse, ranging from standard barbecue to a proprietary Polynesian Sauce. King of the sauces at Chick-Fil-A is the chain's titular Chick-Fil-A Sauce. For a product that Costco shoppers have compared to Chick-Fil-A Sauce, members can check out Sweet Baby Ray's Chicken Sauce.

While single bottles of the Sweet Baby Ray's Chicken Sauce are available at competing stores, Costco sells the chicken sauce in larger but still relatively reasonable two-packs of 22-ounce bottles. YouTube user striker1211 filmed themselves tasting both Sweet Baby Ray's Chicken Sauce and Chick-Fil-A Sauce in a blind taste test. While they were ultimately able to deduce which was which, they found both sauces similar, even preferring the Sweet Baby Ray's product. While each had its own distinct flavor, "it's very close," they concluded. "Very very close. But there is a difference in taste. Both are good."

Just like the basic chicken sandwich is a defining item at Chick-Fil-A restaurants, leading Chinese-American fast food chain Panda Express is defined by its orange chicken. What makes the Panda Express orange chicken so delicious is a combination of deep-fried dark meat chicken and an indulgently flavorful sauce. The closest possible experience to Panda Express orange chicken on Costco shelves is the Crazy Cuizine brand's frozen bags of Mandarin Orange Chicken.

Each box of Crazy Cuizine Mandarin Orange Chicken from Costco weighs in at approximately 4 pounds. On TikTok, one user with an account dedicated to spotlighting Costco products shared a video explicitly assessing the Crazy Cuizine orange chicken for its proximity to Panda Express. "The chicken inside is so tender," they concluded. "And the sauce — I'm not kidding — the orange chicken sauce tastes like Panda Express orange chicken. Honestly if you packed this into a Panda Express box and told me this was Panda Express I wouldn't think twice about it."

To anyone who lives in a state without a Jack in the Box, the notion that dollar-fifty tacos are one of the best things at a chain that mostly does burgers might sound preposterous. Of course, for Jack in the Box aficionados, there's nothing quite like those cheap, oily tacos. With that said, Costco warehouses stock a pretty close approximation in the Don Lee brand's frozen Crispy Shredded Chicken Tacos.

Rather than a bulk quantity that could last a family a week or two, the Don Lee Crispy Shredded Chicken Tacos at Costco are packaged in relatively standard packs of 16. So, one box might make for a solid dinner for two. Compositionally, the Don Lee tacos are flat, crispy, and oily, just like their Jack in the Box counterparts. The one key differences is their use of chicken as a protein rather than Jack in the Box's notorious beef-soy hybrid. But fans of the chain's iconic tacos have found that their Costco dupe hits the spot all the same. "Closest thing to Jack in the Box tacos you can get at a store," wrote one Reddit user.

Just like tacos outshine Jack in the Box's signature burgers for plenty of customers, there are those for whom the signature roast beef sandwiches at Arby's are overshadowed by the chain's mozzarella sticks. While mozzarella sticks are readily available at plenty of sit-down chains — most notably Chili's — that fast food-tier of cheaper, more sinfully indulgent mozzarella sticks is pretty scant outside of Arby's. Connoisseurs of the Arby's mozzarella sticks can pick up the Farm Rich brand's frozen Battered Mozzarella Cheese Sticks at Costco for something that satisfies in a similar fashion.

Like the Ore-Ida hash browns, Farm Rich mozzarella sticks are stocked in Costco business centers, meaning they're sold in 6-pound boxes, each containing two full bags. Flavor-wise, they're so similar to their Arby's counterpart, some claim that they're identical, though there's no evidence to suggest Arby's actually sources its mozzarella sticks from Farm Rich. "The mozzarella sticks they sell in the business Costco are the exact same ones they use at Arby's which are the best sticks you can get," wrote a user on Reddit.

For former and current Starbucks regulars, not just the cafe chain's famously strong coffee but its food items too might have become fundamental to a morning routine. One way to keep such a routine going without having to visit a Starbucks every morning is by enjoying Costco's refrigerated Kirkland Signature Uncured Bacon and Gouda Sous Vide Egg Bites at home.

One box from Costco contains a pretty reasonable quantity of 10 egg bites. Of course, the Starbucks item the Costco product most closely resembles is the Bacon & Gruyère egg bite. Different though the Kirkland Signature version's cheese component might be, the general concept of a bite-size mass of egg filled with bacon and cheese still hits just about the same. "This is just like a brand name drug manufacturer also making the generic version," wrote a Reddit user about the Kirkland Signature product. "This way they get all the market share. IMO, these egg bites and Starbucks' come off the exact same assembly line."

For a more complete meal, Starbucks patrons can skip the snack-y egg bites and opt instead for a breakfast sandwich. Among the coffee chain's offerings is the Double-Smoked Bacon, Cheddar & Egg Sandwich, served on a croissant. Costco offers an uncannily similar item in its freezer aisle, simply branded as the Kirkland Signature Breakfast Sandwich.

A single box contains eight sandwiches, each of which consists of bacon, egg, and cheddar on a round croissant bun. The Costco product may rank among the 13 unhealthiest frozen breakfast sandwiches you can buy, but anyone willing to overlook its nutritional content will find that it's similar enough to its Starbucks counterpart, some swear it's literally the same thing in different packaging. The Kirkland Signature sandwiches are also, notably, cheaper. "Thought $16 for 8 sandos was pricey, but when I broke it down, it was worth it," wrote one Reddit user. "Comparing this to Starbucks's version makes KS an absolute steal."

Identifying the best fast food dupes at Costco meant first compiling as many Costco items as possible that shoppers have compared to fast food items. That required both searching explicitly for discussions among Costco shoppers highlighting fast food dupes, as well as simply searching for Costco items that resemble fast food before searching for comments that might make the comparison explicit.

A few fast food-reminiscent Costco items didn't make the final cut, because they either lacked sufficient discussion comparing them to their fast food counterparts, or because a majority of comments from Costco shoppers described them as subpar. Any Costco item that both resembles a popular fast food item and is generally enjoyed by Costco members, based on online discussions, made the cut.