How Sam's Club Is Still Selling The Cheapest Rotisserie Chickens
Even the least desirable chicken bits have become precious commodities in recent months. Restaurants are struggling to sell chicken wings after ramping up prices on the once-affordable pub dish to keep up with rising inflation, while factors like climate change, high gas prices, avian flu outbreaks, and climate change are contributing to chicken shortages on the whole, per The Washington Post. If you're planning on loading up on chicken breasts for your next Japanese katsu sandwich party, you might have to scour a few different grocery stores to rack up the number on your list — and even then, there are no guarantees.
Curiously enough, grocery store rotisserie chickens — a Sunday supper savior that, if not sacrificed for a big pot of chicken soup, can be used in countless leftover applications for days on end — continue to grace us with their presence. Despite the rising cost of raw chicken parts, grocery chains are doing their best to keep their rotisserie birds affordable, and the Walmart-owned warehouse store Sam's Club may be slinging the cheapest one on the market. Here's how.
Risk and reward, baby
CNN reports that rotisserie chickens are one of the few grocery store items whose prices have yet to soar, even amidst a "16.4% annual increase in chicken prices." That's not because rotisserie birds are inherently cheaper but rather because grocery stores know that shoppers — especially families — rely on the item's affordability. By keeping rotisserie costs low, grocery chains hope to hold onto customers who might otherwise give up on them in search of somewhere more affordable.
"The rotisserie chicken is a prized item for supermarkets because it pulls customers into stores," the outlet explains. "Typically, customers will shop around and buy more than just a chicken for dinner when they visit." If a customer sees that a store's rotisserie chicken is $4.99, as it is at Costco and BJ's Wholesale Club, per CNN, they'll likely be more inclined to pony up the extra cash for produce, eggs, and other inflation-affected items at the same store.
If you think the $4.99 price tag at the aforementioned chains sounds like a deal, the Walmart-owned discount chain Sam's Club is hocking their rotisserie chickens for a cool $4.98. Of course, fighting to score customers amid the current financial climate is all part of the game. "Stores can raise prices on other goods to make up for these losses," CNN added. Now might be a good time to review all the ways to use up leftover rotisserie chicken, and we can all rest easy knowing that other warehouse staples, namely Costco's $1.50 hot dog and soda combination, aren't rising in price yet (via Food & Wine).