Costco adds strawberry streusel cheesecake for big gatherings

Costco has added a 4.5-pound strawberry streusel cheesecake to its bakery case, pricing the dessert at $22.99 and building it for crowds rather than single-serve impulse buys. The cake has a graham crust, cheesecake filling, strawberry topping and streusel crumble, and it is sized to serve roughly 12 to 14 people.

That format fits the way Costco already talks about bakery business. The company’s bakery page says its desserts are meant for special moments and occasions, including holiday gatherings, and it pushes trays and finger-food spreads alongside sweets. In other words, the warehouse is not just selling dessert, it is selling a solution for birthdays, cookouts, office parties and long summer weekends.

The same logic shows up in Costco’s broader dessert lineup. The same-day site lists a 12-inch Kirkland Signature cheesecake, while Ferrara’s Bakery New York Cheesecake 2-pack is sold as an 8-inch two-cake pack with each cake serving 10 to 12 people and staying refrigerated for up to four days. Those are not casual snack items. They are high-volume, shareable desserts designed to move with group orders and event shopping.

For bakery staff, that matters because the job is not only to make the product look good. It has to be produced on time, chilled correctly, displayed cleanly and replenished before the case gets picked over. A cheesecake that is priced right but understocked, poorly signed or slow to rotate can turn into a member complaint fast, especially when weekend demand spikes.

Costco has also been trying to make its bakery ordering less clunky. The company is rolling out app-based ordering for custom cakes and deli trays in 2026, a move tied to customer feedback that Ron Vachris discussed during Costco’s December 2025 earnings call. That shift points to the same operational reality: bakery demand is important enough that Costco wants to smooth out the order process before shoppers even reach the warehouse.

The strawberry cheesecake is already getting extra lift from social media. A June 23 Instagram post from Laura Jayne Lamb, who runs Costco Hot Finds, helped surface the item, and TikTok reviews and reposts have kept it moving through member feeds. It also lands in the middle of a fruit-forward bakery stretch that has included strawberry-and-cream desserts and a strawberry cream pie.

For front-end teams, that kind of bakery hit can change the whole basket. Members who come in for a cheesecake often leave with paper goods, fruit, drinks and other cookout supplies. For bakery crews, stockers and managers, it is another reminder that Costco’s dessert case is part of the summer traffic engine, not a side show.