What little things could Costco do that would make the experience significantly better
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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A website and mobile app that didn’t feel like they were built by a second semester computer science student as a class project.
It’s really the other shoppers that are my least favorite part of the Costco experience. Draw lanes and arrows on the floor? Traffic lights at the checkouts? Warning lights or beeping when you and all the women in your family are discussing the great turkey disaster of 1939, all while standing in front of every item I came to buy?
Another Costco to draw some of the shoppers would probably work.
– Cup holders on the carts
– Scan and go checkout like Sam’s
– Order cafe item from app
– Bring back churros
– Get rid of 3rd party sales reps
– Early access to store hours for executive members
– Curbside pickup to hopefully help decrease the number of people physically in the store
Make the cashback a digital feature on the app. Eliminate paper checks and the risk of them being stolen/lost.
Use a digital delivery option for the annual cashback money, and give the member options for how to redeem it(PayPal, venmo, gift card, check, etc). Obviously people aren’t redeeming their cashback and the paper mailers are obsolete and ineffective.
Lemme order a hot dog during regular checkout.
ETA: This may be location-specific, and nice to see it’s at least possible for some!
Nice try Costco! Do your own homework!
Open more in more dense cities? The lines are really dense these days
Copy Sam’s Club Scan and Go function.
Open earlier. Like 8:30am so people with kids can go after drop off
If they could make everyone else leave while I am shopping that would be neat.
Express line. If you can carry everything in your arms (no cart), you can use it.
Don’t require separate logins for spouse on the app. We want to see all transactions in one login.
Costco will never do this due to potential lost sales, but I’d like to have smaller carts available. It would make maneuvering through the store much easier when I just want to browse and only buy a few things.
I think they should open at 8:00 a.m. instead of 10:00. That would make a monumental difference in how much I enjoy shopping there. It’s just always too crowded. I’m just always in someone’s way. There’s always people in my way. I really have to be in a good mood to go there. You know what I mean?
Give me a bathroom option within the shopping area itself.
Bring back the chicken containers. Add more car corals. Stop letting sales people harass me when I enter/ exit
Ban people with bad etiquette. Leave meat with dry foods? Ban. Leave your shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot? Ban. This alone would weed out so many undesirable shoppers and free up a lot of space for normal people.
1) focus on the customer to the exclusion of all else.
1a) open earlier, close later. Recognize that existing employees’ opinions on that issue are unimportant.
1a1) recognize employee opinions are pretty much unimportant in general. They’re getting paid to be there and there’s a reason you call it ‘work’. Happy employees are great, but Costco has let the dogs up on the couch.
1b) remove the card check at the door. Anyone can come in and browse. You can’t *buy* anything without a card.
1c) line management, line management, LINE MANAGEMENT. More checkers–I should rarely see closed checkout lanes. Marshall shoppers to open lanes. The goal is throughput.
1d) if there’s a line at receipt check, someone has failed. Add people and push them through. They’re not really counting that well anyway–I leave all the time with or without things on my receipt.
2) eliminate the in-store vendors. I didn’t pay to be in here to dodge cell phone maggots, knife salesmen, etc.
3) your app and online presence. The less said the better. Sam’s Club is embarrassing you people. Just copy them and be done with it.
4) the treasure hunt is fine, but focus on regular reliable stock. I need to know staples are going to be consistent quarter after quarter, not replaced or eliminated.
5) EVERY Costco gas station gets a diesel pump. These people have work trucks. You think they don’t want cheap fuel?
I like this idea. But isn’t part of their cost savings giving out the boxes so you can load your stuff into them and they can offload the costs and labor of breaking them down, crushing them, and paying someone to take them off their hands. I doubt they’ll have the incentive tho if it’s cost adding for them.
Allow me to include food court pizza in my Costco app instacart delivery orders.
Scan and go would be a huge game changer
Hire someone to create a proper queuing model. This lord of the flies business has got to go.
I just want to know where the shit is. App or sign or whatever
Sell brewed coffee along with the soft drinks.
Early hours one weekend day
Maybe stop rearranging everything 😅
Bring back the combo pizza
Give the executive membership status more perks. I’m not sure what that would be but maybe special hours for executive members. Also maybe a punch card for hotdogs/pizza slices. For example Buy 5 hot dogs (separate days) and get the next one free.
Corndogs
Big thing: give up on the fun maze. Organize typical traffic flow by food temp. Put cold stuff last to minimize melt
Target shopping carts are the best. Cup holders, phone holders, what have you.
Either check my costco card at the door or check it at the checkout lane. Not both. It’s really annoying.
I’m sure I’m in the minority – but I wish they’d get rid of the free samples – or move them to a less busy part of the store.
I can’t understand why self check out and regular line up down the main aisle. Both sides of the aisle were full all the way to cereal and it was so hard to get through to go to the next aisle.
Get rid of the obnoxious cell phone people!
Universal foreign food court menu for all of USA
Bring back the churro.
Have a law school. Welcome to Costco i love you
Cup holders in the shopping carts.
Bathrooms in the front and the back of the store.
Stop moving shit around so much.
Scan and Go similar to Sam’s , better benefits for executive members , maybe 1 hour early access
Cart racing tournaments. First to complete 5 laps wins a chicken.
Old people will be stationed around the free sample areas as obstacles
Personally I would love a smaller cart option. Probably won’t happen, but I would use it.
Bring back the huge luscious cinnamon rolls.
I really miss those mango smoothies. And supreme pizzas, but I’m sure they hurt the bottom line; so I aint’ losin’ sleep over it.
Not continually keep moving items around on aisles!!!
Oil changes and scanner guns for self checkout.
My regular location is clean, organized and staffed with friendly people, and I think they are a top5 location. If they could go beyond what they do now I think it just be faster checkout, often the line is deep, and fairly steady.
Coordinate the lines better. Mine is kind of a shit show where sometimes it’s one like going to the registries. Sometimes it’s two. Sometimes it’s a community decided one but some fucker decides to go ahead of everyone.