The Genius Way Some Costco Shoppers Are Bringing Their Hot Dogs Along For The Ride

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We could write passionate paeans to the joys of Costco hot dogs: the amazing price, the exceptional "snap" of the all-beef weenies, and even a heartbroken lament over the loss of the discontinued Polish dogs (RIP, beloved glizzies; you were too good for this world!). We've been guilty of a viral Costco food court hot dog hack or two — don't knock the pizza wrap until you've tried it — but, until recently, we'd never explored the idea of a Costco trick involving transporting our hot dogs around the store more safely so that we can munch as we browse bulk TP and Kirkland Select goodies.

When we were researching a cart hack for an improvised cup holder in our shopping carts, we discovered a whole cottage industry of folks who created ingenious gizmos that attach to your Costco shopping cart, making a little platform for your meal. While plopping your hot dog right down on the infant seat of your cart can raise some, um, questionable sanitation concerns, a bespoke hot dog tray is easy to keep clean and is only yours, ensuring that nobody else can contaminate it. 

We've seen folks selling actual tray attachments, some of which have cup holders (killing two birds with one nifty stone!), and even downloadable PDFs for those with 3D printers to construct their own. For those of us who always either settled for eating hot dogs in Costco's loud, crowded food court or resorted to a one-handed hold while the other manipulated the shopping cart with an unwieldy, ineffective arm bar, these devices could be a total game changer.

We first saw an independent seller online peddling a Costco hot dog tray called "The Buck Fifty," and loved the name, but that's far from the only aftermarket add-on that you can use to mod your shopping cart for better hot dog traveling. We've seen Amazon selling a generic shopping cart tray with a round hole for your drink, for instance. Current entries are spacious and look universally adaptable, but are a bit spendy and take a while to ship. Also on Amazon? A portable cart-adaptible cup holder. It may not work for food court pretzels or pizza bakes the way that a tray would, but if hot dogs are your Numero Uno, you could rig up two of these cylindrical vessels: one for your beverage and one for your weenie. We've also seen folks on Reddit using a simple hanging basket from IKEA that retails for around one dollar, making it actually cheaper than even a Costco hot dog.

Of course, the innate problems with all these (otherwise very cool) BYO hacks is that they depend on two possibly unreliable variables: your memory, which you will require to actually bring these tools along on every shopping trip, and your willingness to clean the fussy things so that they remain a better option than just biting the bullet and putting your hot dog on the basket with a protective layer of paper napkins. Your mileage will vary as to whether any of these tools is actually a net benefit for you and your Costco trips.