7 Changes I Wish Costco's Bakery Would Make

There's so much to love about Costco's bakery: It has a huge selection, generally good quality, and offers excellent value for your money. In fact, it's one of the best grocery store bakeries around. Whether you're looking for a sheet cake for your next party, a giant package of croissants to feed a crew, or just a few loaves of bread to make an excellent sandwich, Costco's bakery section has you covered. It's one of the first areas I visit at Costco, and it's where I stock up on baked goods and treats when I have a sweet tooth.

That doesn't mean that it's a perfect place to shop, though. There are a lot of things that Costco's bakery doesn't do particularly well and places where it falls short. As someone who has shopped at Costco for over six years, these flaws won't stop me from shopping at the bakery. But if the grocery chain made some of the following changes, I think my shopping experience (and that of many other customers) could be seriously elevated. Whether you have the same Costco bakery pet peeves as I do or have a totally different list of complaints, these changes may help you get a clearer sense of what this grocery department offers — and also what it lacks.

Listen, I understand that Costco is a bulk store. That's basically the whole point of shopping there in the first place: to save money by buying in bulk. This generally works well for pantry and even freezer staples that you can use slowly, over time. But with baked goods? It's not exactly ideal. A lot of Costco's bakery products don't contain preservatives, which means they have a relatively short shelf life. When you combine that with the fact that you're getting absolutely massive portions there, it's way too easy for your baked goods to go bad before you can get to them.

The store's beloved croissants, for example, come in a pack of 12. Unless you have a relatively large family that's eating several croissants within a couple of days of purchase, you're probably not going to get through all of them. Even when I've purchased these when I've had friends coming over for extended stays at my house, a large portion of them have still ended up in the trash. I can imagine that they're good for parties or other large gatherings, but I find that these portion sizes aren't very useful if you're just buying for your own household. Even though I may have thought I saved money by buying in bulk, I found that it's not actually a smart purchase if I end up throwing half of them away.

I'm a big fan of sweet treats from Costco's bakery section, and I'm glad that the store offers so many desserts, from cookies to cakes and everything in between. However, I tend to find that Costco's bakery section is pretty dominated by sweet baked goods. You'll find cupcakes, muffins, and even New Orleans-style beignets galore, but you're generally out of luck if you're on the hunt for a savory focaccia or spicy cornbread kind of situation.

As someone whose palate skews toward the savory end of the spectrum, this seems like an arena in which Costco's bakery is missing out on sales. I suspect there are plenty of customers who would be interested in these kinds of foods but don't want to have to make them themselves. Maybe someday the good folks at Costco's corporate bakery department will decide to break the mold and start rolling out more savory options for customers. But for now, you'll have to settle for a just-okay bread selection and tables upon tables of sweet pastries instead.

Now, when I say that a lot of Costco's bakery items aren't made from scratch, I don't mean that they're not baked in-house. According to a poster who claims to be a Costco bakery employee on Reddit, most of Costco's bakery goods arrive at the store frozen. It's then thawed and baked on site. So, yes, you get the freshness of just-baked bread, but you can bet that the employees didn't make most of the dough themselves that very same morning.

Costco is a large grocery chain, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that not every item in the bakery is made from scratch. After all, that could make it hard to pull off consistency across so many different locations. However, I can't help but to think that baking more of these items from scratch would result in better, fresher flavors at many, if not most, locations. I, personally, would love the flavor of a freshly baked cookie rather than one that's more mass-produced. And to me, some of Costco's cookies don't taste particularly homemade.

Before deciding what to buy in this part of the store, I feel like I need to get a better sense of what's made totally from scratch and what's not. One Redditor claims items like cupcakes and cheesecake are made in-house. But most breads arrive frozen and are subsequently baked before going out onto the floor. Knowing this makes me hesitate before I buy "fresh" bread at Costco.

If you've been a Costco shopper for a while, then chances are, you were lucky enough to try Costco's old muffins. These muffins were sold in two six-count packs, which you could mix and match. These muffins were also quite large, arguably offering more than a single serving size per muffin.

But in December of 2024, the Costco bakery section made a change. The store switched out the old muffins for new, smaller packs, only sold in sets of eight. While you can technically get a package of muffins for less money, the price per muffin is higher. I think that the quality of the muffins declined as well — they're not as moist as they once were, with a drier, crumblier texture that just isn't very pleasant. 

And the flavors just taste ... off, with a sort of artificial, oily tinge to them that they didn't seem to have before. Now, have I previously complained about those muffins being too big? Sure. But I liked the fact that you could cut them in half and get two servings in one, and I like feeling like I'm actually getting my money's worth when I shop at Costco. But this just seems like yet another example of shrinkflation, or the idea that you're getting less food for your money. But I'm not the only one who dislikes the new muffins. One disgruntled customer called the situation "the muffingate of Costco," which just goes to show how upset other customers have been about the change.

I've already mentioned that I wish that Costco would make more savory baked goods. But even if that's not going to happen, I at least wish the store would tone down the sweetness in some of its sweetest bakery items. A lot of them are so sugary that they're actually hard to finish, and that's an especially big problem when you get so many of them in a package like you generally do at Costco. Ultimately, I've ended up wasting many a Costco baked good simply because they were so sweet that I really only wanted a few bites before my sweet tooth was satisfied.

While there are some less aggressively sweet pastries in Costco's bakery — like the almond danishes — many of the other options, from chocolate chip cookies to the store's sheet cakes, can be cloying. For years now, consumer preferences have been moving in a direction of less sweetness in desserts, but perhaps Costco's just not getting the memo. Or, perhaps, there are just way more sugar lovers out there that the store is trying to appeal to. Still, though, I wish the big-box grocery chain would offer more less-sweet treats in its bakery lineup.

Taking little kids grocery shopping is no easy feat. You have to keep them entertained while you try to find everything on your list and get it into the cart. So, if you can find something to keep them occupied, it can make your life a lot easier while shopping. The bakery section can help with just that. Customers say that at some Costcos, they've received free cookies for their kids at the bakery. Of course, they're not getting a whole package of cookies — rather, they receive a single treat to munch on while their parents or guardians grab what they need. I can imagine that Costco would be a little calmer (and quieter) if the little ones whose parents were shopping there had a sweet treat to munch on.

However, this reportedly doesn't happen at every Costco bakery. According to some user accounts, the bakery stopped giving cookies out to kids during the pandemic, and some wondered when it would come back post-COVID. Still others remember getting cookies from Costco's bakery as kids but haven't seen the practice in recent years, which proves that its availability is spotty. If I had little ones myself, I'd hope local Costco still handed out cookies — and if you're wondering if yours does, you can always ask to see what they say. But I still wish that this were standard practice at every Costco location.

There are so many discontinued items Tasting Table misses from Costco's bakery, but the Roasted Garlic Parmesan Bread might just be the one that I personally want back the most. It tasted a lot like garlic bread, but the garlicky flavor was actually baked into the bread instead of just spread over its surface. That garlic flavor was nice and complex, probably because it had ostensibly been roasted. And when you get that touch of cheesy flavor? It really takes everything to the next level. It offered a layer of complexity that you don't often find in basic loaves of bread, and it also satisfied my desire for more savory items at Costco's bakery. It was the perfect accompaniment to a saucy tomato dish, and it created the perfect shell for flavorful sandwiches.

Unfortunately, though, you'll no longer find it at the store. It seems to have been discontinued in 2023, and it's unclear whether it will ever reappear. Still, though, I hold out hope that Costco will one day return to its senses and bring back this utterly delicious loaf.