Costco is beloved the world over for its (including the ), many membership perks, and high-quality house brand, Kirkland Signature. If you eat a lot of tuna, their Albacore solid white in particular is a great deal, as it's sold in 7-oz eight-packs for just $18.99 (most tuna cans are only five ounces).
Yet those who know about house brands know that stores like Costco aren't out there catching their own tuna or making their own almond butter; they have a network of partner brands who manufacture the goods for them. So who is behind Costco's Kirkland Signature tuna? Costco's tuna is actually manufactured by one of the in the canned fish industry: Bumble Bee Tuna. And while Costco sells its tuna for what amounts to $2.
37 per can, a single 7-oz can of Bumble Bee Tuna sells on Amazon for $2.79, over 40 cents more, for what is exactly the same product. How Costco netted Bumble Bee In the early 2000s, Costco wasn't happy with what it perceived as low-quality tuna, so the company opted to shop around and find a tuna company that would work with it to make "tuna like it used to be," per .
That meant chunkier, meatier fish, and it opted to go with Bumble Bee. A year later, in 2002, after much research and testing, the tuna was on Costco's shelves, and they were projected to sell $30 million in 2003. While Costco's Kirkland Signature brand tuna, produced by Bumble Bee, is slightly more expensive per ounce than other name brands sold in supermarkets, looking at the tuna contained within.
