Costco Says the Churro Returns to All U.S. Food Courts in September — Still No Price or End Date

The firmest thing Costco has said about the churro was said to investors rather than to shoppers. On its fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call on September 24, 2026, the company confirmed the return directly, in the words recorded in the call transcript: for a limited time, the food court churro will be returning to all U.S. locations starting this month.

Two details in that sentence matter, because both replace something vaguer. "All U.S. locations" replaces the warehouse-by-warehouse rollout Costco described on Instagram six days earlier, and "starting this month" puts the return in September 2026 rather than leaving it undated. Reporting on the call differs on which executive spoke the line — some accounts attribute it to chief executive Ron Vachris and others to chief financial officer Gary Millerchip — so this page attributes it to the company rather than guessing at the speaker.

What the call did not do is put a number on it. No price appears anywhere in the transcript, and Costco has still not announced one. It also gave no last day, which is the fact this page most wants and does not have.

Costco ran the announcement as a two-step reveal on its own Instagram account. On September 16 it posted a teaser video shot in a warehouse food court in which the returning item's name was bleeped out, and shoppers spent two days guessing in the comments.

On September 18 it named the item. Fox News quotes the announcement as "The Churro is BACK in U.S. food courts for a limited time!", followed by a line telling shoppers to "Look out for it at your local warehouse over the coming weeks as exact launch dates vary."

That second sentence is the operative one for anyone planning a trip. Costco did not give a single national launch day; it said the rollout is staggered and that individual warehouses will get it at different times.

Three things are missing from the announcement, and each one is a question readers are actively searching for.

**A price.** Costco has not said what the churro will cost. Several outlets have printed $1.49, but that figure is the price the churro carried before it was pulled in 2024, not a number Costco has attached to this return. Yahoo reported explicitly that Costco has not yet announced how much the churros will cost this time around. This page does not print a price because Costco has not stated one.

**A launch date.** There is no national date. Costco's own wording pushes the question back to the individual warehouse.

**An end date.** Costco described the run as limited time and stopped there. No last day has been announced.

Re-checked on September 30, 2026 — the last day of the month Costco named. Nothing has been added: no price, no end date, and no single launch day.

Costco's own wording is the reason the September commitment is looser than it sounds. Its post says to "look out for it at your local warehouse over the coming weeks as exact launch dates vary" — a staggered rollout, not a date. So a shopper whose warehouse has no churro today has not missed it and is not being told it failed to launch; Costco has said the arrivals are uneven by design, and the "coming weeks" language extends past September on its face.

Widely repeated reporting puts the price at $1.49, matching what the churro cost before it was withdrawn in 2024. Fox News attributes that figure to reports rather than to Costco, and Costco has published no food court price itself, so this page still does not print $1.49 as the price. What can be said is that no outlet has reported a different one.

The $1.49 figure is everywhere in the coverage, and it is not a price Costco has announced for this return. USA TODAY reported on September 18 that Costco has not said what the churros will cost this time, and that $1.49 is what they sold for before being pulled in 2024. The earnings call six days later added nothing on price: the transcript contains no figure at all.

So the number in circulation is a two-year-old price being read back as though it were new. One earlier report, cited here until this check, said a video shared by Costco showed $1.49; that source is now behind a paywall and could not be re-opened, so it has been dropped rather than left standing unverified.

This page carries no price until Costco's own post or a food court menu can be read directly — the same standard applied when the return was first covered.

Costco has sold two different churros. The straight version was on food court menus from the 1990s until 2020. In 2021 the company brought a churro back in a twisted shape made to a different recipe, and that version was discontinued in early 2024.

The one returning now is the twisted version. The Takeout reported that shoppers responding to the announcement said they had been hoping for the original straight churro rather than the twisted one, which is why the reaction to the news has been mixed rather than uniformly positive.