California woman tried a Costco hack for buying beef and walked away with 21 steaks at $7.57 each

California realtor Sarah Kuhn went viral on Instagram after testing a Costco hack that reportedly involves buying beef wholesale and butchering it at home. She wanted to see whether the effort of processing that much meat was worth the potential savings. Her video has drawn over five million views, and based on her caption, she believes it was.

In her Instagram post, Kuhn explained that she bought a whole slab of beef, cut her own steaks at home, and asked the butcher for the tube of ground beef “everyone keeps talking about.” She wrote that she was “genuinely shocked at how much money I saved” and plans to do it again.

Kuhn began her trip by asking a butcher for a tube of ground beef, a request she said the butcher counter did not seem happy with given how busy the store was. She secured a 4.37 lb tube for $25 before picking up a whole New York strip slab for $159. She then headed ho me to start her DIY butchering project, noting that the slab was very heavy and the process felt intimidating.

The per-steak math caught commenters’ attention

Kuhn told her audience that, based on online tips, she froze the slab for 30 to 60 minutes to make the meat easier to cut. She then cut it into generous slices and ended up with 21 steaks, although the job took four different knives. One commenter calculated that the slab worked out to “about $7.57 a steak.” Kuhn then sliced the ground beef tube into one-pound portions before vacuum sealing them.

Kuhn’s figures come from her own post and cannot be independently verified, and the per-steak math does not include sales tax. The video comes as beef prices remain elevated across the U.S.

In September, WTTW reported that Bureau of Labor Statistics data put ground beef at $7.16 per pound, up 7.9% from 2025. BLS data also put uncooked beef steaks at an average of $12.69 per pound. WTTW noted that high demand, a shrinking U.S. cattle herd, and tough raising conditions are keeping prices elevated, and consumers may not see much relief in the near future.

While some commenters chided Kuhn, noting that buying in bulk has been a standard money-saving method for years, others were grateful for the walkthrough. Many users offered their own cutting and storage advice for getting the most out of a wholesale purchase. One user noted that shoppers can also ask the butcher to cut steaks to their preferred thickness “at no added charge.”