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After a nearly 40 year career as the chief financial officer of Costco, Richard Galanti has stepped down.
Galanti’s last day was March 15 and he will remain with the company in an advisory role through January 2025.
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“Richard has made innumerable and invaluable contributions to its success. He is widely known, admired, and respected among our shareholders, employees, business partners, and others,” Costco CEO Ron Vachris said in a statement earlier this month.
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Among Galanti’s most celebrated achievements is his commitment to preserving the price of Costco’s iconic $1.50 hot dog and soda combo, unchanged since 1985 despite inflation.
With Galanti now leaving the company, he’s reassuring consumers that the deal is “probably safe for a while.”
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“Some businesses that are doing well with margin … those things help us be more aggressive in other areas, or, as you mentioned, hold the price on the hotdog and the soda a little longer — forever,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
He added that Costco culture is about keeping things simple.
“We generate more money than we need every year. I’m not trying to look for the last penny by doing something a little more risky.”
While Costco’s food court has long been reserved for members only, the company has began cracking down in some locations that were less stringent about that policy, as reported by The Takeout on Tuesday. There have been no indications of similar policy changes at Costco locations throughout Canada.
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“Effective April 8, 2024, an active Costco membership card will be required to purchase items from our food court. You can join today. Please see our membership counter for details,” reads a sign allegedly posted at a Costco location in Orlando, Florida and shared online.
Even Galanti has supported increased enforcement, including the use of ID scanners to prevent people from sharing membership cards.
“(Using ID scanners) speeds up the process at entry and speeds up the process at the checkout,” he told CNN recently. “That’s what we believe and we’re going to pilot it.”
Membership wasn’t a problem for one Costco hotdog super fan who ate nothing but a Costco hotdog meal for one week earlier this year.
Joey Kinsley, 30, a content creator based in Cleveland who goes by the handle Sir Yacht ate 29 of the $1.50 hotdogs over a seven day period in January.
Kinsley said he wanted to see if paying “$1.50 for a glizzy and drink was worth it.”
Kinsley made no qualms about it, stating that he lost weight, spent just US$43.50 on a week of food and “balled on a budget.”
He also took daily vitamins, drank almost four litres of water a day and walked between 16 and 24 kilometres each day.
“What I’m really gonna miss most is not just consuming glizzies, but spending only $1.50 on a meal,” he told People after completing the challenge. “That’s something that’s completely unheard of in 2024.”
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