The Current - How Costco became a cultural phenomenon

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Perhaps when you turned 16 you were most looking forward to getting your driver's license. Talk to young people today and many have their eyes on a different rite of passage: a Costco membership. As Canadian communities clamour for Costcos, we speak to Canada's 'Costco Queen' Tina Chow about Costco's exploding social media growth. Then, journalist Ben Ryder Howe breaks down the global retailer's business strategy — and why it's working.

Hey, guys, I heard there's a party going on right here. Jason, Jason, there's a trade war, cost of living crisis, a tough federal budget coming. This isn't time to celebrate. But, guys, it might be time for a House party, our weekly chat about Canadian politics. We are back for a short period now that Parliament's returned. I'm Catherine Cullen. I'm Daniel Thibaut. And I'm Jason Markasoff.

Join us political nerds on Wednesdays in the House feed wherever you get your podcasts. Party with nerds. Sounds amazing. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. What were you most looking forward to when you turned 16? Maybe it was getting your driver's license. Well, that was then. These days, many young people have their eyes on a very different ID card.

I am doing one of those things. It's kind of a ride of passage to adulthood. I'm literally about to go. going Costco and get my very first Costco card. I'm so excited. It is a thing. Teens and young adults posting the milestone of getting their first Costco card. Costco has become a social media phenomenon with a huge fan base. People track new products, share their Costco obsessions. Soup dumplings seem to be a big thing among Generation Z. And influencers share their latest halls, including the total costs. I have a Costco hall to share with you today. My total came to

$433.87. I'm going to show you everything that I purchased at Costco today. It cost us a whopping $798.97. Here's the final hall in all of its glory. Total today came out to $450.255.26. Holy smokes. Indeed. Costco may be an American company, but Canadians seem to love it. Quarterly results out last week showed that the company's sales grew the most in Canada, up something like 8.3 percent. The first Costco store in Canada opened in Burnaby, British Columbia, in 1985, and the CBC's Nolton Nash shared the big news. A new kind of store has opened in Canada, and it's promising big savings for its customers. The store is called a wholesale club, but it's not a very exclusive club, and that's made some of its competitors nervous.

Nervous perhaps with a good reason. Costco is currently the third largest retailer in the world behind only Amazon and Walmart. Canada has 110 Costco's and more are coming. In a moment, we will speak about Costco's strategy. But first, my next guest knows her way in and around a Costco warehouse. Tina Chow has been called Canada's Costco Queen. She is the founder of the social media brand Costco Lovers Canada. She is unaffiliated with the company and she shares her Costco finds from her hometown of California. She is in London, England this morning. Tina, good morning. Good morning.

Why do you love Costco so much? There are so many reasons why I love Costco. I love the staff. I love the vibe when you're in there. But I love that you can do a one-stop shop. Absolutely everything's at Costco. A lot of people don't realize they have stationary. They've got kitchen appliances, pharmacy, optical, hearing aid. you can get your tires change there and just buy everything you need in one stop. How much of this is about the price and the fact that you can go at easy, you buy a lot of different things, but is it about getting things cheaper or is there something else that's going on there for you? It definitely is about getting value when you're in Costco.

There's lots of name brands that are sold there like Dyson or Vitamix. And people don't realize it'll also be a little bit less expensive, but there'll also be something added into the Costco package that adds value to the package that makes it worth more. So, for example, if you have a Dyson Air Wrap, you might get a brush and the carry case with it, which could be a $100 value. So it definitely has a lot to do with price. But what is it about, I mean, beyond the price, this is a store. You don't see people, you know, having, no one's the Loblaws queen or the Walmart queen. You're the Costco queen. What is it, what is it about this store that has made it into a thing?

I think what Canadians love is connection and Costco connects everybody. The whole family will go there. Even here in London on a Sunday, the entire family was there after church. Everybody will shop. They'll have samples. Kids will love to see what they want to see. Moms can look for clothing. There's just something for everybody in there.

And then you can spend time as a family, go have a $1.50 hot dog in the food court. It's affordable and have a great day out. How much of this is about the card and the membership card? We heard young people, you know, excited about getting their first card. You have to pay to be a member. It's like between $65 and $130 depending on the level of membership. But you get that card. How much of that is about, you know, look at what I have and it's the membership card.

Well, when you're a member that makes you feel like you belong and that makes you part of the community, I know that I'm excited for my daughter to eventually get her card because she needs to gas up her car now that she's driving or her school is near a, Costco so she could go in and have a $1.50 hot dog for lunch. So it has a lot to do with the membership card. And I think, you know, I joke with my friends and we laugh about having a black card if you're an executive member. But some of them didn't even know how much cash they were missing out on by not having an executive membership and all the perks of having the executive membership. And I think not just being a member of Costco for groceries, but Costco also has Costco travel. Costco has cell phones that you can get there and get Costco shop cards back.

So there's just so much more to Costco than walking into a Loblaws or Walmart. I think those stores might not be as curated the same way as Costco is because Costco does a very good job, if you ask me, of following the demographics and the brands that people want brought in and the trends. And they do a great job of bringing in local. So in Canada, we've got brands from Quebec like Lazy Pants and Lola. I'm from Calgary. We've got Righteous Jolato, which is right in Calgary.

And then there's a brand that just got brought in Jack Wills, which I saw here in the UK. So their buyers seem to be able to know what we want. This is an American company. We are in this moment of a trade war with the United States where we are buying Canadian. People are looking for the little flag on their thing. Do you worry about shopping at an American company in this moment? I don't because I feel like I'm supporting Canadians because Costco employees Canadians. And I've seen the trend where Costco has sourced Canadian items. There's tomatoes

from Canada. They brought in, we saw garlic come in from Canada, anywhere where they've been able to bring in Canadian products, again, to give the shoppers what they're looking for, has been done. And I did definitely see a shift when the tariff war started, that they were sourcing more Canadian products. As the Costco Queen, are you recognized in Costco? Do you get special treatment? I'm recognized, but I don't get special treatment, and I make it a point, you know, no one, if I can't find my membership or my phone isn't downloading the app, the staff are very patient with me, but I will make a point to stand and wait until I can properly scan my card because I don't get special treatment.

I can say that the staff are amazing and great to me and will point out something that's new. They're excited to show me, oh, look, this came in last night or this came in when I'm in the warehouse, and but other than that, nothing special. The queen is just part of the regular population. You just move with the people. That's right. And it makes it fun. Tina, it's good to talk to you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Tina Chow, the Costco Queen of Canada and the creator of the social media brand Costco Lovers Canada. Okay, here's a few movies. Guess who is the common thread between them? Lost in Translation, Ghost World, the Prestige, and like a million Marvel.

movies. I'm talking about Scarlett Johansson, the highest grossing actor of all time. Scarlett's directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, came to this year's Toronto International Film Festival, and I talked to her all about loneliness, forgiveness, and compassion, all themes in her new film. Find our chat on Q With Tom Power, wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube. Ben Ryder Howe is a freelance journalist. He wrote a piece for The New York Times. The headline was how Costco hacked the American shopping psyche. Good morning to you. Good morning.

How does what you just heard speak to the phenomenon that this store is and has become? It's not, I mean, you don't hear people evangelize like that for other brands often. It's so true. I think that one thing that you hear, what you just heard, is the love of authenticity that people have for Costco. That's something that really matters to, and to millennials, they want to believe that the places that they shop are authentic. And Costco has, for almost 50 years now, really tried hard to cultivate trust in its members. That is a principle that has made it something really, I would say, beautiful and rare in the world.

You know, consumer trust is hard to find nowadays, and Costco really has it. You said that Costco, these are your words, is ostensibly a discount store, but it is also an aspirational shopping experience. What is aspirational about going to Costco? It is an aspirational shopping experience in the sense that people go to Costco thinking of themselves as being good shoppers and responsible shoppers, and doing something that they can feel good about. They trust the company. They trust Costco to give them good deals and make them feel good about themselves while they're shopping there.

And, you know, again, this is, I mean, this is something that is incredibly rare nowadays. I mean, you know, who doesn't love shopping? Who doesn't love buying things? But do we really trust the companies that we buy from? Do we believe that they have our backs? Do we believe that they are, you know, doing the right thing when we, you know, when we give them our money and our trust? Part of that trust is built up through the House brand, right? The Kirkland brand.

Can you tell me a little bit about this and how – there's a lot of work that the company puts in to deciding what it is that's going to stock under its own name? So Kirkland is an amazing brand. And also, I would say, a social media phenomenon. it is Kirkland sells has greater revenue than many

very large companies and like Nike and Coca-Cola correct and it in part is able to do this again because they

mark up very little you know it's something like they have a cap of I think 14% and And they do incredible research to figure out where they can use Kirkland to give people better value than they are getting on some of their favorite products.

And again, it is a no-frills operation. You know, you're getting very high-quality apparel or it could be, well, it could be food, but you're getting very high quality materials with very little marketing. And again, it's the plainness that speaks to people. It is not being marketed to. You know, you get, you know, I'm wearing a Kirkland T-shirt right now. And my very white, very durable, very well-made white Kirkland T-shirt doesn't say Kirkland anywhere except inside the shirt.

faded so far that I can't even find it myself. That appeals to people. I mean, people like knowing that they are getting a good deal. And if it's not being marketed, I mean, they rely, this is what we see out of social media and the role of influences. They rely on people to spread word of mouth through this kind of, you know, treasure hunt experience of there's a new product and you need to find it and someone's going to tell you about it. They seem to have the magic touch, you know, this social media phenomenon, the having their members do their marketing for them is very Costco. You know, I mean, and again, it, you know,

it shows the enthusiasm that people have for the brand. And this is a company that for a very long time, you know, minimize its advertising costs. I mean, when I was reporting this story, one of the things that I was truly astonished, and have never seen before in my career was they don't have a PR department. You know, they, they, they, they, they, they do things in a very unusual way. And, and this goes back to the company's founder and to the company's leadership.

They are, they're extremely disciplined. And the, and, and, and so, and this is, this generates things that, that, that no other company is able to generate like the, the, the social media phenomenon. That's not to say that they don't encourage it and they don't have a budget for it, but a lot of these things really are, you know, it's part of the mystique of Costco. Is it a cult? This is a question that you pose in the piece. Well, you know, people renew their Costco memberships

at extraordinarily high rates. I think it's something like 94%. And again, you know, there's this mystique and there's this evangelizing, and, you know, internally the company, they're extremely disciplined. You know, good luck finding out, you know, who works there. Good luck finding out much about how the company operates. People who work there, whether it's in the front office or in the stores, they're lifers. They stay there forever. And, you know, one of those lifers,

who I talked to when I was in Houston, he compared the store to a combination of Disney World and the military, which I thought was really evocative, but didn't change my mind about it being a little bit cult-like. Do we know whether when I'm buying a gallon of hummus at Costco? I mean, am I getting a good deal on the things that I purchased there? We don't know. And that is, you know, if there is a, if there's a dark side to Costco, what I would say is, you know, you, this is a company that, that for much of its 50-year history did not allow credit cards.

There were no lost leaders. There was no advertising. There were no discounts because everything was discounted, right? they had, they were really hardcore, really old-fashioned. It was supposed to be a store where you went in, and again, you know, there was very, very little interaction between you and the, and very little mediation between you and the store. Now, this trust exists because of that, but we just, we just don't know. I mean, they haven't opened their books, and they never will, and we'll never know how much, you know, of a deal we're getting.

What do we know about how Costco treats its suppliers? You've said that it is the arbiter of survival for millions of producers, including more than a million cashew farmers in Africa alone, because Costco sells half the world's cashews. How does it treat the people who supply the goods that end up on those giant shelves? I can't say in my reporting that I came across any complaints. Again, it is a disciplined company that seems to take its relationships very seriously. that said, nobody wants to alienate Costco, right?

I mean, Costco is life or death for entire industries. And I, you know, I don't think they're going to, they're going to say anything bad about it if they don't have to. But it's pretty clear that, again, the company not only takes, I would say they are an ethical company, and they take the relationships with their suppliers very seriously. Do you see that in terms of how the company treats its employees? I do.

I mean, again, hard-to-find employees who have anything bad to say about working there. They tend to stay there for their entire lives if they can. Very hard to get a job at Costco. It's competitive. It's well-known that working for Costco is a good deal. And is that just in terms of wages and benefits, or is there something else that's going on there? it's not just wages and benefits it's it's a happy place to work i mean people like the experience

they like the way the company treats them uh they you know it's it's it is um it's a company with a again you know internal culture is so hard uh you know getting people motivated getting people to believe that they are not just working a job but working for a company they like uh that's that that that's that's you know incredibly rare And again, it comes down to leadership and discipline and tradition and culture. It's interesting. I mean, when the Trump administration was pressuring companies to abandon their DEI policies, Costco doubled down on this, right?

I mean, under threat of whatever, attention, if not more, from the government, the company said, no, we're keeping these policies. What does that tell you? Well, I was struck by that because it did, not only did they double down, they were public about it, and they're not very public as a company. They don't often, you know, they don't, they're not known for, you know, people wouldn't be able to, nobody, I don't even think many Costco members could tell you the name of the CEO. That said, you know, I was also struck by it because it, I mean, if you look at the top ranks of the company,

it doesn't look very DEI. And it's, it is a, it is a company that, you know, is the upper ranks are actually rather male dominated and, traditional. So I was interested in that, but also at the same time, it's, you know, it is a company that has a very strong record in its communities of hiring representative populations and taking those obligations very seriously. I'll let you go. But I mean, is this, we've been talking about this as a store, but is it a symbol of something more than just a store? Last week, you had the Trump administration saying that Iranian delegates at the United Nations couldn't shop. at Costco. Apparently, diplomats when they come to the United Nations General Assembly love to shop at Costco, and they were told you can't go to Costco. Is this more than just a store?

It is. That's amazing. I didn't know that. People will go on pilgrimages to shop at Costco. I mean, you know, when I was reporting the story and I went up to Alaska, you know, people will carve out, you know, weeks out of their schedule to go to the store. and fill up their cart, they will do the same thing when they travel around the, you know, they'll travel around the world to go to Costco. And it is. It is a, I would say that for many people, it is the brand that they identify with most, you know, when they, when they, when they, when they want to tell people who they are, they will say, I am, I'm a Costco shopper, you know, and, and that says it all to a lot of people. It, it says, not just what you buy and how you live, but, you know, what you believe in.

What you believe in. Ben, thank you very much for this. Thank you for having me on. Ben Ryder Howe is a freelance journalist regular contributor to the New York Times and New York Times Magazine. He wrote a piece about Costco called How Costco Hacked the American Shopping Psychie. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening.

I'll talk to you soon. CBC Podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.