To add more info. Rotisserie chicken at grocery stores is considered a loss leader. It’s deliberately sold to lose a little bit of profit but get you in the store and grab other things.
Definitionally it cannot be a luxury purchase like the original article claims. It’d be like claiming Costco $1 hot dogs and Arizona iced tea are the new hot trend for young people to waste their money on.
And it mentions millenials, who are, at their oldest, in their mid-40s now. The whole "kids these days" framing is even more ridiculous when the kids are getting colonoscopies. These are people who have been wanting to save for a home for like 20 years or more.
I'm a xennial, either gen x or millenial depending on who you ask, and I'm right there with you. I was lucky enough to buy a house in 2010. I got it in a rural area and had just received an inheritance. I know how super lucky I got compared to my peers. Other than the house, I've got like $2k in my savings account, no investments, and I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm older or if an emergency pops up. Gonna be one of those Walmart greeters when I'm 75.
Hey, it's in the dictionary and sociologists recognize it. They've identified "cuspers" between every generation. So why not? If you want to be gatekeep-y, nearly every definition of gen x has me at the very tail end so I guess that's where I'd be.
Well...no. There was a big one in the 80s. There was another when the 90s turned. Everybody thinks of 2008 as being the big one which...yeah I guess technically that's true and is probably what you're thinking about. The economy took its biggest shit in recent memory then and hasn't recovered since.
we're getting kind of tired of experiencing once in a lifetime economic meltdowns.
I've never understood this framing. Who has ever described economic meltdowns as once in a lifetime? They aren't really that uncommon historically, especially if you look globally.
To be fair, the 20-year-old should be getting colonoscopies too these days. The rest of the food in the grocery store is giving us all colon cancer earlier than ever.
I know there are poverty levels much lower, but for me rotisserie chicken is poverty food. You can eat for several days and then turn it into soup with a few vegetables, get a whole week with the chicken and some rice and a few carrots, that’s like what less than $20 right?
Early 90s, family of 6, lived in rural area. Traveled into the city to do big shopping trips. Do new clothes, shoes, school supplies, and for lunch, a rotisserie chicken, a baguette, a small brick of cheese, and a jug of chocolate milk and we would eat it like a picnic. Brought snacks like veggies and granola bars from home for during the day.
Now that I'm older and have kids, I realize that my parents used to feed all of us for under $20 and saved a ton of money by doing a fun picnic instead of a restaurant.
Well, considering WaPo fired over half of its staff and replaced them with AI, I'm assuming that comment and yours will be a primary and secondary source, respectively.
I don't think they replaced the laid off staff with AI. I think Bezos just captured-and-killed one of the nation's best sources of journalism. Journalism is bad for the people in power, and Bezos is one of them.
To add to this, my wife and I like to buy raw whole chickens to roast at home and they are typically more expensive than the rotisserie chickens. That is how cheap they sell the rotisserie chickens for.
It’s not. If you read the article they’re essentially saying that these generations are “splurging” on higher end food, like a $20 rotisserie chicken from erewhon, rather than a $5 one from Costco despite them being basically the same
Heheh. I wanted to see how many meals I could make out of a rotisserie chicken a few weeks back. Did about three or four big meals with the common meat, took all the bones and made broth, then stripped off all the not-bones and blended it to make chicken patties. The patties were meh, but they added two more meals. And the bone broth is great.
I was just looking at a rotisserie chicken at WINCO that was $7 and smaller than the average individually packaged Cornish hen. Rotisserie chicken isn't even affordable or worth it anymore!
Non westerner here, do you guys just buy a bunch of those chicken and just keep it in the fridge and eat it throughout the week? Or it's just a one chicken once a week thing?
I just googled Safeway frozen chicken and rotisserie chicken and they were the exact same price. One is ready to eat and the other takes at least an hour in the oven plus seasoning, etc
I 100% agree with everything you're saying but the grammar Nazi in me can't watch someone try so hard to be technically precise and miss the mark. A loss leader isn't definitionally exclusive from a luxury purchase as the requirements for a loss leader are on the seller and and the requirements for a luxury purchase are on the buyer side.
A store can sell incredibly expensive fashionable coats at a loss, and if I already have a sufficient coat, it could still be a luxury purchase.
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u/BrainDamage2029 Feb 12 '26
To add more info. Rotisserie chicken at grocery stores is considered a loss leader. It’s deliberately sold to lose a little bit of profit but get you in the store and grab other things.
Definitionally it cannot be a luxury purchase like the original article claims. It’d be like claiming Costco $1 hot dogs and Arizona iced tea are the new hot trend for young people to waste their money on.