I find this cool time lapse video of pumpkin pies flying off the shelves at Costco incredibly satisfying to watch. A Reddit user named ibanezerscrooge provides this estimate of how many pies were sold during the hours captured on film:
My estimate of the number of pies on that table at the beginning of the video is about 1,200 (5 rows x 30 columns x 8 pies in each stack) and it looked like the shelf was emptied and replenished about 2.5 times, again as an estimate which comes out to 3000, so that checks out, lol. At 5.99 a pie that's ~$18,000
User MelonLord13 provided confirming information, stating:
My wife worked for a bit at the Costco bakery, and can also confirm this is roughly the number they sell daily. She also did work as a cashier and said it was insane to see them coming through in nearly every cart.
It's truly amazing how many pumpkin pies Costco sells every year. Allrecipes reports that Costco sells over 6 million pumpkin pies a year, and most of those are sold in the three days leading up to Thanskgiving.
For more facts about Costco pumpkin pies, I turned to this video by Mashed, titled "The Untold Truth of Costco's Pumpkin Pie." I learned that the recipe that is still used today was created in 1987 by Sue McConnaha, Costco's VP of Bakery Operations. It was designed to be easily replicated across all Costco kitchens in order to create consistent pies. The pies are made from Dickinson pumpkins, which are grown in Illinois. While the original recipe was used to create 10 inch pies, today's pies are 12 inches and weigh about 3.5 pounds.
Now I'm hungry for pie.