Thread by @KrisAbdelmessih

Here's a story that starts with Costco and ends with a broader question.

After a recent shopping trip I was telling a friend how good the Kirkland tequila anejo is. I was wondering which spirit brand they laundered the Kirkland name thru.

After some raving about Costco and how you can literally drop $300 there on a casual Friday morning and not feel bad about it my friend shared a story of Costco's buying power.

She was privy to Costco's dealings with the Hidden Valley brand. She told me that years ago Costco in an desire to be more healthy didn't want to sell a product with msg...the magic ingredient in HV Ranch dressing.

It turns out, the product has a cult following that can taste the absence of the magic ingredient.

Costco stood firm on its desire.

So HV spent nearly 2 years creating an msg-free recipe that was indistinguishable to the die hards.

That msg free version is only sold in Costco and only in those huge bottles. My friend was very impressed by Costco's power and how it wielded it.

(she also expressed regret that this new formulation didn't become the version sold everywhere but that's besides the point. Maybe the msg-free margins are terrible. Who knows)

Now this is a meatspace friend. No knowledge of Buffet-twitter-orgy over Costco. But from Twitter I learned that Costco limits its profit margin and seems to follow a sustainable strategy bc it maximizes long term value.

So is this story, or at least what I've heard, an example of ESG? Is there an ideological problem with how Costco wielded its scale in a competitive marketplace? Is this just best-case ESG used as a trojan horse to cover up less genuine examples?