A Costco membership can open up a world of possibilities. From the big-box chain’s famed $4.99 rotisserie chicken to low prices on expensive ingredients like vanilla extract and olive oil, there are deals in every aisle if you know what to look for. Perhaps no department, however, pulls its weight more than the meat section, where you can get whole, untrimmed beef tenderloins or enough steaks to feed a crowd, all at warehouse prices. Another plus of the meat department is that it’s spotlessly clean. Every night, the staff cleans and sanitizes the entire meat room from top to bottom with a foam disinfectant, then hoses it down. So, if you were worried about buying meat from Costco, you can now rest a little easier.
Costco’s meat department is one of its biggest moneymakers, which means it moves quite a few steaks and chops. So, perhaps it makes sense that it cleans its processing area in much the same way that a commercial meat-packaging plant would. The cost of losing business if someone gets sick isn’t worth the risk. In a TikTok video that’s received over 336,000 likes as of this writing, @amybalsam0 caught a moment when the staff was hosing down all of the antibacterial foam at the end of the shift. “My son does this,” one person commented on the video. “He says Costco is on another level of clean.”
Costco has a reputation for cleanliness
In @amybalsam0’s video, you can see how Costco’s entire meat room has been treated with the foam, which is allowed to sit for a certain amount of time to kill any bacteria. A worker then turns on a high-powered sprayer to hose everything off. Another person commented on @amybalsam0’s video that the staff performs this routine every single day, writing, “I worked at Costco and I could promise you this is true.”
@amybalsam0 #costco#disinfecting
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Apparently, it’s not just Costco’s meat room that’s super clean, either. A third person commenting on the video said that they worked at Costco’s meat-packaging facility, and the standards were just as high. Another chimed in to add that the deli room is cleaned the same way. And this method of hosing down the entire room isn’t just a Costco thing. Based on the video’s other comments, people said that this process was similar, if not the same, at Whole Foods, Albertsons, Publix, and Sam’s Club.
But the question isn’t whether or not you should buy meat at Costco — it’s why you haven’t already done so. Now you know that the food is prepared in a super clean environment, and if you have space in your fridge or freezer to buy in bulk or get large cuts, you can get a great deal. Not only that, but you can pick up a case of toilet paper and a big-screen TV at the same time.
