You’re at Costco. The food court is predictably packed, tables already overrun. You could buy the warehouse chain’s famous $1.50 hot dog + drink combo before shopping—except there’s nowhere to comfortably stash it while strolling around. At least, not if you don’t have a certain special 3D printed tray.
Juleon Cotillon, a fellow Bay Area local and pastry chef by day, is a 3D printing (and Costco) enthusiast who ran into this problem. But instead of awkwardly standing in a lesser traveled aisle and eating as fast as possible (hi, that’s me), he put his AutoCAD subscription and Bambu Lab P1S 3D to work and created The Buck Fifty.
This custom 3D-printed tray attaches to the back of a Costco shopping cart’s baby seat, jutting into the space where a toddler would normally sit. A cupholder sits to the right, while the hot dog lies comfortably on a flat platform on the left. Given how slow navigating a Costco with a cart can be, this potentially precarious perch should keep your snack (or early/backup meal) safe enough. Plus, let’s be real—that dog will be gone before you even finish strolling down a main aisle.
You can buy the original version for $19.69 from Cotillon’s Shopify store, which is now taking pre-orders after massive interest from excited Instagram shoppers. But any Costco fanatics who double as AutoCAD + 3D printer whizzes could take this as inspiration for their own custom versions. (I’m dreaming of one with a Kirkland logo, as well as variations with lettering in Chinese or Japanese.)
I already plan to put in a pre-order as a gift for a friend, but you know, this project may finally motivate me to experiment with 3D printing at last. And think of someone in my network with an AutoCAD subscription I could barter with.