Costco
Costco is arguably one of the most well known wholesalers in the world. It has been around for decades and it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. The wholesalers first branch was opened up in Seattle, Washington in the early 1980’s. From that day on the business has just gone from strength to strength. It has been steadily levelling up. Over the years it has opened multiple branches across the USA and around the world. Now it has become somewhat of a household name. Most people you know have probably shopped at Costco at some point in there lives. Are you a regular shopper at Costco and have you tried the Costco vegan sushi platter?
Costco’s Food Trends
In recent years Costco has been keeping up with global food trends. They have been noticing the rise in popularity of vegan products. Which has led them to respond by increasing their repertoire off plant-based products. To be honest not many people associate Costco with veganism. Do you associate Costco with the plant-based movement? That could all soon be changing. As more and more people opt to go vegan for ethical and health reasons. Companies like Costco will have to adjust to their customers new needs.
Costco’s Sushi
Costco have been offering sushi to their customers for a long time. But more recently they have decided to include vegetarian sushi platters to there product range. Now after waiting for decades vegans also have the chance to finally try the famous Costco sushi platter. Are we the only ones who think it was well overdue? Should Costco have rolled out a vegan platter with the vegetarian one long ago? Probably so, but better late than never. Upon hearing the exciting news about Costco’s new vegan sushi platter the entire Caavakushi team were extremely excited. None of the team could wait to get their hands on Costco’s latest creation.
Sushi
Fans of Japanese food all know what sushi is. If you haven’t got round to tasting this delicacy from Japan we definitely recommend that you do. Sushi is an art form in the kitchen. It not only tastes divine but each dish looks like it was designed by an artist. It’s also not the cheapest cuisine you will ever try. In fact it may just be one of the most expensive food choices on the planet.
Vegan Sushi
Many vegans have been cooking plant-based sushi for a long time. It’s certainly not anything new to the vegan community at large. However it is a current hot new food trend making its rounds in the food industry. From what we gather it’s all to do with consumer trends. Most supermarkets and other retailers have seen a steady rise in the vegan niche over the last few years. This has lead them to respond by increasing their vegan food range. That’s where vegan sushi comes into play. The supermarkets noticed that they didn’t have any vegan Japanese options on the shelves. So they created vegan Japanese dishes and waited to see how consumers reacted. Ultimately the reaction was a positive one. Now we see more vegan sushi options than ever before available to us. But still not as many as the meat choices.
The Vegan Niche
There are other reasons why we are seeing a large increase in vegan sushi choices where ever we go these days. Vegan food is considered a niche. Although the vegan niche has been growing rapidly over the last decade it is still unfortunately for the plant-based community seen as a niche. The reason why being seen as a niche is not a good look for vegans is that niches are not considered mainstream. If a food or product is not what the majority of the world are consuming it is sometimes considered as hard to come by or harder to produce. The gate keepers of the food and retail industries therefore believe they have the right to increase the pricing of vegan options compared to their more mainstream meat and dairy counterparts. Would you consider that fair practice?
Animal Costs
The cost of an animals life has less value than a vegetable at this point in time. How can taking an animals life cost less than harvesting a vegetable? Well it all comes down to monetary gain. People really will do anything for a coin. Animals like pigs are fatten up in cages until they are only 6 months old at which point they are sent to the slaughter house. Imagine someone sending 6 month old human babies to their death. That wouldn’t go down very well. Their would be public outrage and protests. It would be called murder. Why are the innocent lives of these enslaved animals in farms being cut so short? Why is no one calling their deaths murder?
The Cost Of Japanese Food
Japanese restaurants around the world are notoriously pricey places to dine. They have earned this price bracket because of the quality of their cooking and presentation. The dinning becomes an experience rather than just a meal. Chefs trained in the art of Japanese cooking have under gone years of training in order to perfect their skills. All this translates to the pricing of the food. That is another reason why vegan sushi has a hefty price tag attached to it. So businesses that create or sell vegan sushi have two categories from which they ultimately benefit from. The Japanese category and the vegan.
What Does Vegan Really mean?
We’re in the twenty-first century and shockingly people still don’t know the difference between vegan and vegetarian food. Even more frightening is that some individuals have no idea what a vegan is. All they have to do is look it up on the internet or the Caavakushi vegan search engine, it’s really not that hard. Being vegan/plant-based or veganism is a diet or lifestyle choice. It’s a great choice for people who are looking to turn their health around for the better. The plant-based diet is reported to have one of the lowest incidence of cancer. There are also many ethical reasons why people decide to go vegan. People feel that they don’t want to participate in the murder and torture of animals. These people want to live a vegan cruelty-free life.
Vegan Sushi Platter Review
Reactions to the Costco vegan sushi from the Caavakushi team varied immensely. Some reported being overjoyed by the flavours while others weren’t as impressed with Costco’s latest project.
What’s Inside
Let’s get to the part you really want to know. Do you want to find out what all the fuss is about? Shall we take a look at what exactly is in this polarizing Costco vegan sushi platter?
Contents
It is packaged in a black and clear plastic container so you can clearly see the sushi in the platter. The container is also clearly labelled and the contents of the product is clarified on the label. Looking through the clear plastic packaging you can see that there are ample condiments inside the container. The package has 34 pieces of vegan sushi. 6 pieces of inari nigiri, 4 grilled red pepper nigiri, 4 mixed vegetable nigiri, 7 pickled red cabbage + yellow pepper + rocket rolls, 6 shiitake mushroom + Pepper + Lettuce rolls, 7 pickled carrot + cucumber + red pepper rolls. Although not mentioned you can see that there looks to be sesame seeds, paprika and chives on the outer layer of some of the pieces of sushi.
Dislikes
Some of the Caavakushi team did not care for the platter at all and said it was highly overrated. Others stated that it was a disappointing experience altogether.
Underwhelmed
Most of the team claimed the whole experience was very anticlimactic. They complained that the platter as a whole was underwhelming in taste. The team thought that the Costco vegan sushi platter looked stunning but sadly didn’t deliver when it came to taste.
Avocado
The Team were very upset by the fact that there was no avocado in the entire Costco vegan sushi platter. Who would dream of having a vegan sushi platter without avocado? The entire team agreed that the vegan sushi platter would have tasted a lot better if it included avocado maki rolls and yasi rolls.
Chop Sticks
Another strange observation the Caavakushi team made was that the box did not include any chop sticks. How odd is that? Were not saying that there weren’t any available on the side somewhere near by the Costco vegan sushi, probably hidden next to tissues. It’s just weird that such a big sushi platter did not have a pair of chop sticks somewhere inside it. Do you think it’s strange or normal not to have any chop sticks in your vegan sushi platter?
Likes
But it’s not all bad news for the Costco vegan sushi platter. A lot of the team had nothing but praise for Costco’s newest vegan sushi creation. There were a few things that the whole team loved about the platter.
Portion Sizes
What they liked most of all is the large portion sizes. In true Costco style they didn’t let us down when it came to size. Each piece of sushi was enormous and very filling.
Condiments
Another thing that came as quite a surprise was the seemingly endless supply of condiments that came with this vegan platter. A range of sauces, wasabi, crispy flakes and pink ginger was included. It gave the illusion that we were given a lot extra. We weren’t just given one of each condiment. We had 4-5 packets of pink ginger, two pots of crispy flakes, a few packs of wasabi and all the other sauces. The team members thought this was a fair amount to include.
Price
Unanimously everyone agreed that Costco had hit the nail on the head when it came to the price. The team felt that £9.99 was a good fair sum to pay for the new Costco vegan sushi.
Thoughts
We hope that Costco continues to expand on it’s vegan product selection. Have you tried Costco’s new vegan sushi platter? Was it any good? Would you add it to your shopping cart again? You can find out more about Costco’s vegan food range on the Caavakushi vegan search engine. We would love to hear your opinions on this and so much more. Join our friendly community of helpful vegans on the new free Caavakushi vegan forum. Follow us on twitter & Instagram to learn more about vegan life and animal cruelty.