Costco is known for its food court pizza and affordable booze, but it's the $4.99 rotisserie chicken that keeps many customers coming back. The dedication to the chicken is so deep that when celebrity chef David Chang bashed the affordable dinner, he was met with the wrath of a number of Costco fans.
But something has possibly changed as of late, and some rotisserie chicken diehards are now questioning its taste. The website Eat This, Not That! reports that there's an entire thread on Reddit about the chicken's flavor changing and having a "distinct chemical flavor."
"I was at Costco today and bought my rotisserie chicken just like every time I 'm there. We tasted it and it has a distinct chemical flavor to it, really off putting. Same thing happened last time, about 3 weeks ago. This was never a problem before, been buying it for years, has something changed recently?" the original poster, MillennialModernMan wrote.
Fellow Redditors quickly chimed in, explaining that the rotisserie chickens they purchased recently also had a peculiar taste. One user in particular shared that they noticed a chemical taste roughly a year ago.
"Yes, I've noticed a distinct chlorine-like taste. I've stopped eating it, about a year(?) ago due to the strange chemical taste. I use the Albany, OR store," they wrote.
A number of users hypothesized on what could be causing the taste, but there was one Redditor who claimed to work in one of the warehouses that receives Costco's rotisserie chicken. They offered some insight:
"At the warehouse i work at, i don't know about other warehouses, but we get chicken from two suppliers. For my coworkers and I, we don't really like the chicken from one of them and just refer to it as bad chicken. It doesn't cook really well as the one from the other supplier, and i've heard the taste isn't really good," the Reddit user wrote.
So maybe not all Costco roast chickens are created equal? Costco has yet to respond publicly to customers' concerns.