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Costco Shoppers Complaining About 'Terrible' Produce Quality

From berries to broccoli, members have some major issues with Costco's fruits and veggies.
FACT CHECKED BY Mura Dominko

Costco's shelves are absolutely loaded with food items that shoppers rave about, from Motor City Pizza Co.'s frozen Detroit-style pies to Universal Bakery's Organic Aussie Bites. But even though there are plenty of popular finds at Costco, there's one product category that shoppers say consistently misses the mark: the fresh produce.

Earlier this week, a Costco member took to Reddit to air some major grievances with the quality of the warehouse club's fruit selection. The shopper said they'd waited a full year before posting the complaint just to see if Costco was going through a bad season for fresh produce, but the issues never let up.

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"It gets fungus after a few days. It's crappy quality and never as good as it used to be. What the heck is going on? the shopper wrote.

This Costco member is far from the only one who has a bone to pick with the retailer's fruits and veggies. In fact, shoppers have been complaining about quality and spoilage issues in the produce section for years now—and the new Reddit post has ignited a fresh wave of criticism. Fellow Costco shoppers swarmed the comments section to share their own negative experiences with the warehouse club's produce.

Costco fresh produce
Photo: Trong Nguyen / Shutterstock

"I'll get bananas, but that's pretty much it. Everything else spoils entirely too fast," one Redditor lamented.

"I rarely buy any kind of produce from Costco. It's not the best and there usually [are] a couple of pieces that are bruised and going bad hiding in that package that you don't see until you open it and start going through it. I'm also a family of two so most things we won't even finish before it starts to go bad," another commented.

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Strawberries, potatoes, salads, limes, and broccoli are among the specific varieties that garnered complaints from shoppers.

To be clear, Costco's produce doesn't seem to disappoint shoppers across the board. Some even defended the retailer's fruits and veggies in the comments section, saying that they produce at their local warehouse is consistently good rather than bad.

Still, the fact that Costco's fruits and veggies have garnered so many complaints over multiple years shows that the quality issues have yet to be resolved—at least in some parts of the country. Some shoppers have even gotten so fed up with the produce that they tend to avoid it altogether.

"I don't really get produce there in general," wrote.

Zoe Strozewski
Zoe Strozewski is a News Writer for Eat This, Not That! A Chicago native who now lives in New Jersey, she graduated from Kean University in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Read more about Zoe