Costco Says a Food Court Item Returns. It Won't Say Which.

The teaser promises only a limited-time item at U.S. food courts, and California searches for the menu jumped.

Costco asked its Instagram followers on Sept. 17, 2026 to guess which food court item is coming back. It didn't name the item. The teaser, a video posted to the company's verified account, was written up the same day by KTLA, which reported that the item returns for a limited time and that Costco hasn't announced what it is.

The searching followed. Google Trends had the query "costco food court" spiking in California on Sept. 18, 2026, above 2,000 searches — a lot of people trying to find out, before their next warehouse run, whether the thing they miss is the thing coming back.

What the post actually says

Here's the caption in full: "We're taking guesses... Available at U.S. food court locations only." No item. No date. No price.

That's still where it stands. Costco hasn't named the item and hasn't given a start date, and the one concrete detail in the company's own words is a location rule: U.S. food courts only, per the Instagram post.

The two names in the comment thread

Commenters did the naming Costco wouldn't. KTLA reported that the two most popular predictions under the post were the churro and the combo pizza. Those are fan guesses. Neither one is Costco's word, and neither is the outlet's finding.

The churro grievance is the fresher one. Costco pulled churros from its food court menus in 2024 and moved a chocolate chip cookie into the slot, as KTLA reported when the swap was rumored.

The combo pizza has been gone longer — off menus since 2020. Tasting Table, cited by KTLA, describes it as pepperoni, Italian sausage, red onion, mushrooms, bell peppers and black olives, priced at $9.95 for the whole 18-inch pizza or $1.99 a slice. Those figures belong to the 2020-era menu, not to what's posted at a counter today.

Desk commentary, and it's a read rather than a scoop: I'd bet churro. A two-year-old substitution is an easier thing to undo than a six-year-old deletion, and the churro is the one item here that left a stand-in behind it. The combo pizza's fans have had six years to get loud, which is exactly why they're loud in the comments.

Costco's answer lands on the same Instagram account that started the guessing.