The Reason Reddit Has Issues With Costco's Frozen Cheese Pizza

It's tough to go wrong with pizza. Whether you're buying a cheap, frozen Totino's pie or getting a specialty pie at one of the best pizza places in the country, you're almost always going to get the ingredients that makes this Italian dish one of America's favorite foods: a round of crispy and pillowy dough, a smothering of sauce, and a generous layer of toppings and cheese.

Where pizza does sometimes go awry, though, is when a beloved brand — be it a chain restaurant, a local joint, or even a frozen manufacturer — suddenly begins changing its recipe. It's for this reason that Redditors were up in arms when a Costco item, previously considered predictably scrumptious, suddenly seemed to deteriorate in quality. People have previously called out that Costco's frozen pizza has some surprising ingredients, but it now seems that the warehouse chain has unexpectedly "cheaped out" on manufacturing its cheesy pie, as one commenter put it. Currently, social media devotees are taking to the proverbial streets in protest.

On the Costco subreddit, one poster cooked up a pair of cheese pizzas from the wholesaler's Kirkland brand. According to the user, one pizza was the store's "previous" version (pictured on the left), while the other was newer. When compared side-by-side, the two looked very different, even though the poster cooked the pies in the "same oven at same temp for same time." Their findings? The "cheese clearly doesn't melt the same."

Commenters largely agreed. "The 'cheese' on the new one doesn't look like it is real cheese. Reminds me of the $2 Jacks pizzas," opined one user. "'Mozzarella' cheese that doesn't melt is not usually good," responded the OP. Others said the pizza's looks weren't the only problem. "My kid loves these things...All of a sudden they started cooking different. Easier to burn crust, harder crust and cheese does not melt the same." Another commiserated, "the Kirkland frozen pizzas have been terrible to me for a while."

What could be behind the Kirkland pizzas' supposedly deteriorating quality? Some users, suspicious of the fact that the pizzas "went out of stock then came back," seem to think that Costco changed the recipe with cheaper ingredients. Another user claimed that though Costco's ingredients "do change throughout the year," the OP's experience could have just been a fluke. In the meantime, a few people offered some suggestions to help fellow Costco shoppers out. "When it comes to frozen pizza, get pepperoni so it masks the low quality cheese flavor," said one Redditor. Plus, there are other tricks to make frozen pizza better.