A woman has a bone to pick with Costco after buying its Kirkland Signature Spanish Queen Olives. The olives are stuffed with minced pimientos, but they aren’t exactly what this Costco shopper expected.
In a TikTok with over 2.3 million views, content creator Candi (@candidyamz) airs her olive grievances by addressing Costco directly.
“Costco, come to the front. What is that?” She asks, holding up one pimiento-stuffed olive from her martini glass that is full of them.
Candi sucks the pimiento out of the olive and holds it up to the screen. “That is not a pimiento. A pimiento is a very long rectangle folded in half politely and then shoved into the bed of an olive—brined and juiced, packaged perfectly, a jar that’s just hard enough to open without a boyfriend.”
Her pimiento-stuffed olive looks off
She zooms in on the pimiento from her olive, which is rounded and short. “This is a pimiento jelly bean. What the actual [expletive]? I usually buy your two packs of olives for my martini at night because it’s always five o’clock somewhere. What the [expletive] is that?” she says as the video ends.
@candidyamz @costco whats eveen crazier is the other bottle has normmal pimento in it…. 😑
♬ original sound – Candi 🍭🫀
Viewers weigh in
In the comments section, viewers were equally taken aback by the quality of Candi’s pimiento-stuffed olives.
“It looks like a DayQuil pill,” one viewer quipped.
“I think that’s a jelly bean,” another tapped in.
“Why they putting Mike n Ikes in my olives?” asked another viewer.
Others were more familiar with a small, rounded pimiento in olives.
“I feel like that’s what pimientos used to be in olives. I remember eating them like that as a kid then they changed it to the little square ones,” one viewer countered.
How (and why) are pimiento-stuffed olives made?
It is believed that stuffing green olives with pimientos has been practiced since the 1700s, and it was originally done to cut the bitterness of the olives with the mild peppers.
The pimiento was originally cut by hand into tiny pieces and hand-stuffed into the olives, a practice still maintained for higher-end olives. Since the 1960s, however, most pimiento-stuffed olives are stuffed by machine.
Medium reports that for mechanically stuffed olives, the pimientos are pureed, and a natural gum—a “binding agent” like gelatin or guar gum—is added so the mixture can be made into tiny strips. Those strips are then cut and stuffed into the olive.
While it is still unclear why Candi’s pimiento in question had a more circular shape, she revealed that the other jar in the Costco two-pack had “normal” rectangular-shaped pimientos in the olives.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Candi and Costco via email for more information.
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