Some retirement savers were discouraged by last year's market sell-off, but they shouldn't be. When stocks go on sale, it's always a great opportunity to add quality stocks to your portfolio. Strong companies will bounce back, which will earn even better returns for those who bought shares at lower prices.

Three Motley Fool contributors believe now is a good time to buy shares of Costco Wholesale (COST 1.01%), Kimberly Clark (KMB -0.87%), and Dutch Bros (BROS -1.04%). Whether you are looking for more growth or income, there is something here for everyone. Read on to see why these stocks can deliver the returns you're looking for in retirement.

An unbeatable retailer

Jeremy Bowman (Costco): Brick-and-mortar retail is a  competitive business, and gaining a competitive advantage isn't easy. However, Costco has found the secret.

The membership-based retailer has a unique combination of attributes that have allowed it to deliver superior growth and build an economic moat.

First, its buy-in-bulk model allows the company to offer rock-bottom prices on quality merchandise, ranging from food to electronics to apparel, home goods, and even jewelry. 

Additionally, its membership model means that it can make most of its profits from membership fees and price its merchandise near cost. Its membership retention rate of around 90% shows it has high customer satisfaction rates as well.

Costco is growing by opening new stores, increasing same-store sales, and building out its e-commerce business. And unlike many brick-and-mortar retailers, the company still has plenty of space to open new stores in both the U.S. and abroad.

Costco has also been raising its dividend every year since it first started paying one in 2004, generally increasing it by 10% or more. While the retail stock isn't going to blow away investors with a dividend yield of 0.7%, the retailer has a long track record of paying a special dividend every three years or so, meaning it's a much more rewarding dividend payer than the yield would indicate.

While Costco trades at a lofty valuation, the company's long track record of growth and wide economic moat makes it an ideal stock to count on for retirement, especially as it should continue to deliver solid growth on the top and bottom lines over the next several years and continue to pay special dividends as well.

A leader in products every household always needs

Jennifer Saibil (Kimberly Clark): Americans are complaining about elevated prices at the supermarket, as inflation is making a wide variety of items from eggs to potato chips more expensive. It's a tough situation, and a balancing act for the companies that make these products.

Kimberly Clark makes many of your favorite household essentials brands, like Kleenex tissues and Cottonelle toilet paper. It has increased prices to reflect the effects of inflation, but it's also innovating with features like larger sizes to offset some of the pricing action and provide greater value to its customers.

As a huge and established company, it doesn't generally demonstrate high growth, more like mid-single-digit. Over the past few years growth has been far from steady, first accelerating when toilet paper became the most sought-after treasure at the beginning of the pandemic, and then decelerating or declining because it couldn't match year-over-year comparisons. Now it's dealing with inflation. 

In the 2023 second quarter, performance was back to steady and growing. Sales inched up 1% over last year, but organic sales, or those from existing brands, increased 5%. Earnings per share (EPS) fell from $1.30 to $0.30, but adjusted EPS -- which takes out an impairment for intangible assets and which management feels is a better indication of business performance -- was $1.65. Management raised its full-year outlook for organic growth and adjusted EPS.

Overall, it was a strong quarter where Kimberly Clark demonstrated how it's a solid bet for cash generation and the high-yielding dividend that flows from that.

Kimberly Clark recently became a Dividend King, since it has raised its dividend for the past 51 years. At the current price, the dividend yields 3.5%.

Investors looking for stocks to provide passive income during retirement can likely count on Kimberly Clark for its reliable and growing dividend.  

A promising restaurant growth stock

John Ballard (Dutch Bros): Dutch Bros is a promising, high-growth restaurant stock to consider tucking away in your nest egg. It serves a range of flavors and types of beverages across over 700 shops in just 14 U.S. states as of the end of March.  

The company continues to post strong top-line growth, with revenue up 30% year over year in the recent quarter.  It also has a long record of driving consistent growth in traffic. This concept has huge growth potential to expand across the U.S., considering its small format size and drive-thru model. Dutch Bros could certainly open thousands of shops over the next few decades.

Although last quarter's 3.5% drop in same-store sales is weighing on the stock's performance,  Dutch Bros has been around since 1992. It's a proven concept that usually reports positive same-store sales.

Another factor weighing on the stock is that Dutch Bros' bottom-line performance has been inconsistent.  It makes sense for the company to focus mostly on opening more shops and driving revenue growth, but Wall Street can grow a little impatient in wanting to see better earnings performance.

That said, Dutch Bros saw a significant improvement last quarter in company-operated store contribution margin -- a key measure of store-level profitability. This metric improved nearly 6 percentage points to 24.2%, which also translated to a narrowing loss in net profit across the company.  

It's for these reasons that Dutch Bros shares sell at a big discount to other restaurant stocks.  At a price-to-sales multiple of 2.1, investors can get ahead of Wall Street and own a fast-growing restaurant chain that has the potential to deliver Chipotle-like returns over the long term.