Costco Without the Costco Trip
A Costco trip has its own rhythm. You make room for it, get yourself to the warehouse and leave with more than you planned to buy. For some members, that is part of the appeal. For others, it is a fair amount of effort between wanting something and bringing it home.
Costco members have been able to shop without making a warehouse trip for some time, including through delivery options in Canada. The latest expansion is in the U.S., where Costco has extended its Uber Eats partnership and added nationwide ordering through DoorDash, alongside its existing relationship with Instacart. The arrangements vary by platform and market, but together they give customers more occasions to buy from Costco without going to the store. According to Modern Retail, Costco’s digitally enabled sales, which include third-party delivery, exceeded $33 billion in its 2026 fiscal year and grew more than 20%. That figure covers more than delivery orders alone. Costco’s reported results also show growth in digitally enabled comparable sales.
The numbers caught my attention, but the more interesting change is to the customer’s routine. What does it mean to belong to a warehouse club when you do not have to go to the warehouse every time you shop?
A good offer can still ask a lot of the customer
There are plenty of reasons to enjoy shopping at Costco in person. Members can see what is new, compare products and take home a large order in one trip. The scale of the store and the chance of finding something unexpected are part of the experience.
That same trip can be harder to make on a busy week. A customer may have limited time, a long drive, no car or little interest in navigating a crowded warehouse for a few things they already know they need. Their absence from the store does not tell Costco how they feel about its products or prices. It only tells the company that they did not make that trip.
This is a useful distinction for any business trying to understand demand. If people like what you sell but buying it requires a particular journey, schedule or amount of planning, some purchases will never happen. More advertising might remind those customers that you exist. It cannot give them an hour back on a Tuesday evening.
Delivery changes the calculation for certain orders. A member who would not drive to Costco for household essentials can now see whether ordering them is worth the delivery cost. Someone buying for a gathering may still prefer to choose everything in person. The point is that the same customer can want different ways to shop on different days.
What stays distinctly Costco?
How someone places a delivery order also depends on the platform. DoorDash asks U.S. shoppers to link an active Costco membership, while Costco’s own Canadian same-day service requires a membership and uses Instacart shoppers to fulfil orders. Those distinctions matter because each route presents the Costco relationship, its prices and the buying experience a little differently.
That does not mean the delivered version feels identical to a warehouse visit. Customers will weigh the price of the items, delivery costs, selection, availability and how reliably an order arrives. Some of the pleasure of browsing disappears; some of the effort disappears with it. Whether that exchange feels worthwhile will depend on what the member needs that day.
It also makes me curious about how the relationship develops. Costco’s CEO says purchases through these delivery channels appear to be mostly incremental, with limited impact on its core warehouse grocery business. He also says the platforms are helping Costco reach younger members. Those are encouraging observations from management, though they do not tell us which occasions delivery will serve best or how shopping habits might change over time.
The interesting possibility is that delivery gives a member more occasions to use the membership they already pay for. Someone might make a large warehouse trip once a month and place a smaller order when life gets busy. If that happens, the digital order adds to the relationship rather than replacing the trip.
A question worth asking before changing the marketing
Costco can test this at a scale most businesses cannot. The question underneath it applies much more widely: how much effort does a customer have to make to buy from you, and which parts of that effort are essential to the experience?
A furniture brand might have customers who want to see a sofa in person before buying, but cannot get to a showroom during its opening hours. A food business might have a product people enjoy when they encounter it at a market, but rarely remember to seek out later. In each case, low purchasing frequency could look like weak demand from a distance. A closer look might reveal that customers want the product and struggle with the buying occasion.
That is why I find Costco’s delivery expansion more interesting than a story about another retail partnership. It is a large business finding out how its familiar offer fits into moments when the familiar way of buying does not. The answer will depend on the cost and quality of delivery as much as on the appeal of Costco itself.
For marketers, there is a practical reason to pay attention. When customers are not buying, we often look first at awareness, messaging or persuasion. Sometimes the more useful question is what we have asked them to do before they can say yes.
