Better Than Bouillon® and A-Sha Foods USA are launching Better Than Ramen™, a co-branded at-home ramen kit, exclusively at select Costco locations in the Southeast beginning August 3 — a limited-edition retail play that fuses two specialty ingredient brands under one SKU.
The kit combines Better Than Bouillon's flavor-concentrated base, produced by Summit Hill Foods of Rome, Ga., with A-Sha's Taiwanese-style Air-Dried, Never Fried® noodles, a format the brand markets on its time-honored manufacturing process. The pairing positions the product as a restaurant-quality meal solution at club-store scale, targeting the growing consumer appetite for elevated scratch-cooking shortcuts.
Retail Channel Strategy
Launching exclusively through Costco's Southeast region is a deliberate limited-distribution move — the kind of scarcity-and-exclusivity mechanic that club-store buyers increasingly use to test velocity on premium food concepts before broader rollout decisions. For Better Than Bouillon, a brand whose equity sits firmly in the culinary pantry staples aisle, the ramen kit represents a meaningful daypart and format extension beyond its core broths and bases. For A-Sha Foods USA, Costco placement provides a high-volume proving ground for its noodle platform among U.S. consumers less familiar with Taiwanese dry-noodle formats.
The limited-edition designation also follows a well-worn foodservice and retail LTO playbook: create urgency, measure throughput, and use the data to inform whether a permanent SKU or expanded distribution is warranted. Neither Summit Hill Foods nor A-Sha Foods disclosed sales targets or the number of SKUs in the kit, but the Costco channel typically demands packaging and price-point structures suited to multi-serve or family-format use.
Market Context
The launch arrives as the premium ramen segment continues to expand beyond foodservice into retail meal kits — a crossover trend accelerated by the pandemic-era off-premise surge that never fully reversed. Foodservice operators from fast-casual ramen chains to independent Japanese concepts have long benefited from center-of-plate noodle demand, and CPG brands are now actively competing for that same occasion at home.
Better Than Bouillon's parent, Summit Hill Foods, has built its retail presence on the strength of concentrated, chef-adjacent flavor bases, a product format that resonates with both home cooks and smaller foodservice operators looking for consistent yield without the labor of scratch stocks. Pairing that base with a noodle that carries its own production-method story — air-dried rather than fried — gives the kit a dual craft narrative that aligns with where premium grocery and club-store buyers are focusing shelf space.
For foodservice operators tracking retail incursions into their core occasions, the Better Than Ramen™ kit is a signal worth watching: ingredient brands with strong operator credibility are increasingly packaging that credibility for the club-store consumer, compressing the distance between restaurant-quality and pantry convenience. Coverage of related grocery and retail channel trends and product innovation in foodservice continues across the Foodservice News network.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
