An assortment of Costco facts (Part 1 of 2)

Anyone who has shopped at Costco on a busy day has certainly seen people with carts overflowing with items, signing receipts for hundreds of dollars, and then struggling to fit all of the items into the car. Among people who do not shop at Costco, I think a common image is of people buying a lot of junk food, grabbing items because they are big, relatively cheap and “hey, why not?” Curious about the accuracy of some of these perceptions, I looked up some statistics about Costco. I decided to report on a range of facts, some definitely more relevant to the average shopper than others. 

Here are the first 10 of 20 Costco facts:

1. The average bill from a Costco trip is $100-150.

2. On the average shopping trip to Costco, shoppers purchase nine items.

3.On average, Costco members shop at the warehouse every two-three weeks, therefore visiting the store 23-30 times year. (My family exceeds this average with visits almost every week and often multiple visits!)

4. At the back of Costco warehouse stores are rotisserie chickens. These chickens cost $4.99. if this sounds like too good of a deal to be true, well, it is in a way. Although shoppers who buy these chickens benefit, Costco loses $30-40 million/year by selling them at this price. (They are not kosher so I don’t buy them but people seem to really like them).

5. The Costco in Lancaster, PA has parking spots for horses and buggies to accommodate their Amish shoppers. 

6. Toilet paper is the most popular item sold at Costco (I doubt this comes as a surprise to most people).

7. Costco is the largest retailer of organic food. Therefore, people who may assume that Costco shoppers are only interested in buying huge containers of Oreos, chips, etc. are incorrect. (Not that there isn’t organic junk food…but, in general, organic food indicates some level of concern with health and nutrition.)

8. Costco warehouse stores average 144,500 square feet (the size of a Manhattan city block.) The smallest Costco, located in Juneau, Alaska is about 73,000 square feet and the largest Costco, located in salt lake city Utah is 235,000 square feet.

9. The busiest Costco in the world is in Honolulu, Hawaii, where half of the residents of Oahu have Costco memberships. 

10. Costco’s advertising budget is $0. 

How many of these did you know? Which surprise you the most?