Most of us know that Costco is the place to go for supersized bags of Halloween candy and a great deal on vanilla extract, but when it comes to crowd-pleasing products, you can’t sleep on the store’s bakery section. If you need a boatload of croissants and cookies in a hurry, this is the spot — and the pies are truly the best deal of all.
For an astonishingly low price, you can get an almost 4-pound, 12-inch pie. For years, the crown jewel in the store’s collection — at least for many vegans — was the apple pie. Sadly, that all changed in 2023 when the apple pie was reformulated to include dairy and eggs. “Absolutely love their apple pie,” one Reddit user wrote on the r/vegan subreddit two years ago, adding, “Didn’t read the label (my mistake) because I’ve bought it so many times before… come home and see that it now contains both milk and eggs. Always read labels, even if you’ve bought it before!”
While it was never explicitly advertised as being vegan, Costco’s apple pie was known among plant-based eaters as being an “accidentally vegan” all-star. That is, it was a store-bought product that wasn’t created just for vegans, but earned cult-favorite status because it tasted the same as any apple pie made with animal products and didn’t cost extra as a specialty product or brand.
Where to find an alternative vegan apple pie
Accidentally vegan products are actually a lot more common than you think. This is because food companies don’t always set out to make a vegan or non-vegan product. Lots of our favorite items, like Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers, Sweet Baby Ray’s Original Barbecue Sauce, Twizzlers, and classic Pillsbury Crescent Rolls are all quietly vegan. So while it’s helpful to be able to recognize a vegan product based on its marketing, all you really need to do to avoid animal products is to read the nutrition label on the back of the package.
With that said, if you’re in the market for a vegan apple pie now that Costco’s is off the list, there are plenty of other options. Whole Foods sells an Everyday Double Crust Apple Pie with zero animal-based ingredients in the store’s shelf-stable bakery section. If you’re not near a Whole Foods, however, head to the freezer section of most major grocery store chains and look for pies from Marie Callender’s (Dutch Apple), Sara Lee (also Dutch Apple), Claim Jumper, and Raised Gluten Free. The only downside? None of them are even close to as big as the Costco pie, so if you’re feeding a crowd you’ll probably want to buy at least two. Either that or go for Costco’s cherry pie, which is rumored to still be vegan — but always read the ingredients list to be sure!
