50 free Costco trivia questions with answers. Costco is the store that sells more than half the world's cashews, keeps its hot dog at the same price it charged in 1985, and turns membership fees into most of its profit. This quiz covers the whole warehouse: how a lawyer's San Diego club in a Howard Hughes building became Costco, the founders and the three CEOs, the Kirkland Signature name, the mark-up rule and the 3,700-item shelves. Easy questions cover the food court, the exit greeters and the headquarters town; harder ones get into the merger years, the kosher hot dog supplier, the biggest and smallest warehouses, the poultry plant, the Icelandic food court and the Tiffany lawsuit. It suits a shopping-obsessed friend group, a work quiz or anyone who has ever bought a 48-pack of anything. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Costco, Price Club and Sol Price, and the source sentence appears under each question after you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Washington city is Costco's worldwide headquarters?
Issaquah
The campus sits next to a working warehouse so buyers can walk over and check how merchandise is selling.
Q 02In which city did Costco open its very first warehouse?
Seattle
Portland and Spokane followed within three months, and the original site was rebuilt in 2005 while keeping the same street address.
Q 03In what year did the first Costco warehouse open?
1983
At launch it sold to small businesses at a markup of only 8 or 9 percent over wholesale.
Q 04What is the Kirkland Signature house brand named after?
The town where Costco's HQ used to be
Costco moved its offices from Kirkland to Issaquah in 1996, but the label kept the old town's name.
Q 05In what year was the Kirkland Signature brand launched?
1995
It now accounts for nearly a third of company sales and grows faster than Costco as a whole.
Q 06What did the food-court hot dog and 20-ounce soda combo cost in the US as of 2025?
$1.50
Costco sold more than 137 million quarter-pound hot dogs in its food courts in 2017 alone.
Q 07Costco's $1.50 hot-dog combo price was first set in which year?
1985
Costco started selling fresh food that year from a hot dog cart outside its original Seattle warehouse.
Q 08Jim Sinegal co-founded Costco with which attorney from an old Pacific Northwest retailing family?
Jeffrey Brotman
Brotman chaired the board from 2013 until his death in 2017.
Q 09Sinegal learned the trade under which retail pioneer, regarded as the father of the warehouse club?
Sol Price
Sam Walton wrote that he borrowed as many ideas from this man as from anybody else in the business.
Q 10Price Club, Costco's future merger partner, opened its first store in 1976 in which city?
San Diego
Costco counts its own corporate history from that 1976 opening on Morena Boulevard.
Q 11Price Club's first store was in a former manufacturing building once owned by which famous figure?
Howard Hughes
Members originally had to show a resale certificate or professional licence to get in.
Q 12In what year did Costco and Price Club agree to merge?
1993
The combined company had 206 locations and $16 billion in annual sales.
Q 13What name did the merged Costco and Price Club company use at first?
PriceCostco
Memberships became universal, so a card from either chain worked at both.
Q 14Before merging with Costco, Price Club turned down a merger offer from which retail giant?
Q 21In 2011, Costco's highest-volume store in the world was in which city?
Seoul
By 2018 the Taichung store in Taiwan had the most members of any Costco and ranked second in sales.
Q 22Under a company rule, no regular item may be marked up more than what percentage over cost?
14%
Kirkland Signature items get a slightly higher cap of 15%, and overall profit margins run about 2%.
Q 23Roughly how many distinct products does a typical Costco carry?
3,700
Costco will stock only one or two versions of a product and sell far more units of each.
Q 24Costco Connection's US circulation ranks third behind two titles from which organisation?
Walmart
That rival's warehouse chain, Sam's Club, remains Costco's main US competitor.
Q 15In which year did the merged company revert to plain 'Costco' as its name and stock symbol?
1997
All remaining Price Club stores were rebranded, though former Price Club sites in California are still often staffed by Teamsters.
Q 16When Costco went public on the NASDAQ, shares opened at what price?
$10
At the time the company had just 17 warehouses and 1,950 employees.
Q 17Jim Sinegal began his retail career in what job?
Grocery bagger
He started bagging groceries at FedMart in 1955 and went on to run Costco for almost three decades.
Q 18Before Price Club, its founder had launched which discount chain in 1954?
FedMart
He was famously forced out of that chain before starting Price Club with his son Robert.
Q 19After a 2015 expansion, the largest Costco warehouse in the world (235,000 sq ft) is where?
Salt Lake City
A planned Fresno store would have been bigger, but the city only approved 219,000 square feet.
Q 20The smallest Costco, at under 77,000 sq ft, is in which city?
Juneau
It dates from a 1993 experiment with small-format warehouses.
AARP
It goes free to 15.4 million executive-member households.
Q 25Costco began selling rotisserie chickens in 1994 amid the rising popularity of which restaurant chain?
Boston Market
The birds are such a traffic driver that Costco built its own poultry plant to protect the price.
Q 26In 2019 Costco opened its own vertically integrated poultry factory in which state?
Nebraska
The plant was meant to keep the rotisserie chicken price steady while controlling quality.
Q 27Sinegal described Costco's constantly rotating stock as what kind of atmosphere?
Treasure-hunt
The idea is a sense of urgency: buy the deal now, because it may be gone on the next visit.
Q 28Until 2009, Costco's food-court hot dogs were kosher franks supplied by which brand?
Hebrew National
Supply problems and thin margins pushed Costco to make its own under the Kirkland label to protect the $1.50 price.
Q 29In 2013 US Costco food courts dropped Coca-Cola fountain drinks in favour of which company's products?
Pepsi
Coke had raised prices; the switch helped hold the hot-dog combo at $1.50, and Coke returned in 2025.
Q 30Which food-court item replaced the pretzel in 2009 because of slow sales?
Churro
It was itself replaced by a chocolate chunk cookie in 2024.