It's Official: Pumpkin Cheesecake Is Back At Costco

While Starbucks is transitioning out of pumpkin spice season and into festive holiday drinks, Costco is trumpeting the start of the Thanksgiving season with the annual arrival of its Kirkland Signature pumpkin cheesecake. The three-pound pumpkin pie and the pumpkin spice loaf made their reappearance earlier in the fall, but the pumpkin cheesecake typically appears later in the season, between late October and early November. Spotted November 2 by a shopper at a Southern California Costco and posted on Reddit, the weighty Kirkland Signature dessert is beginning to make its way back onto bakery shelves.

The cheesecake features a graham cracker crust surrounding a pumpkin cheesecake filling, topped with a layer of sour cream sweetened with sugar and spiced with a pumpkin spice blend, according to an alleged Costco bakery worker in a Reddit thread from 2022. The massive dessert is also decorated with a piped frosting border and marked into 16 slices. At roughly 5 pounds total weight, that's 5 ounces per slice — but don't let anyone tell you how big your cheesecake slices should be. That's a personal decision.

In 2021, the cheesecake sold for $15.99, and in 2022, it went for $17.99. As of yet, pricing for 2023 has not been posted. Pricing and availability can vary by location.

For the most part, the Kirkland Signature pumpkin cheesecake gets rave reviews. One Costco-focused Instagram account posted about the dessert upon its 2022 arrival, and the comment section was particularly lively. Someone commented that they had eaten three of them whole and urged others to buy. Another person wrote with similar enthusiasm, "Those are the best!!!! I can seriously eat it until I get sick!" The whole comment section seemed stuffed to the brim with shoppers intent on getting to Costco to pick up their own.

Not everyone is so excited, though. There is no shortage of people, it would seem, who are vehemently opposed to anything pumpkin. One person demanded that it, along with all other pumpkin-flavored food, should be thrown in the trash. Someone else was particularly upset about the piped border, which they described as a buttercream when they wanted whipped cream, saying, "so gross. And the flavor of the cheese cake was so bland no flavor, it was painful to even finish one bite." Meanwhile, a commenter on another Instagram post complained that it "Felt very 'moist' in a weird way almost like it was not done."

Although the negative reactions tended to be more illustrative than the positive ones, they were in the minority on the announcement. One commenter returned 10 weeks ago to lament the wait for the cheesecake's November 2023 arrival. Now, that wait is over.