Costco Trivia
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47 free Costco trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
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 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Washington city is Costco's worldwide headquarters?
Issaquah
Costco's worldwide headquarters is in Issaquah, Washington, on a campus built beside a working warehouse so buyers can walk over and see how merchandise is selling.
Q 02In which city did Costco open its very first warehouse?
Seattle
Costco's first warehouse opened in Seattle, Washington, at 4401 Fourth Avenue South in the city's industrial SoDo district, south of downtown.
Q 03In what year did the first Costco warehouse open?
1983
The first Costco warehouse opened in 1983 in Washington state, and the company became the first ever to grow from zero to $3 billion in sales in under six years.
Q 04What is the Kirkland Signature house brand named after?
The town where Costco's HQ used to be
The town where Costco's HQ used to be, Kirkland, Washington, gave the brand its name; the company left Kirkland for a new campus in 1996 but kept the label.
Q 05In what year was the Kirkland Signature brand launched?
1995
Kirkland Signature launched in 1995 as Costco's single private label, consolidating a scattered set of earlier house brands under one name across categories.
Q 06What did the food-court hot dog and 20-ounce soda combo cost in the US as of 2025?
$1.50
The hot dog and 20-ounce soda combo cost $1.50 in 2025; co-founder Jim Sinegal famously told his successor he would 'kill' him if he ever raised the hot dog price.
Q 07In which year was the price of Costco's hot dog and soda combo first set?
1985
Costco set the combo price in 1985 and held it unchanged for the next four decades, absorbing costs by switching to Kirkland Signature hot dogs and self-serve soda.
Q 08Jim Sinegal co-founded Costco with which attorney from an old Pacific Northwest retailing family?
Jeffrey Brotman
Jeffrey Brotman, a Washington lawyer whose family ran retail stores, co-founded Costco with Jim Sinegal and chaired its board until his death in 2017.
Q 09Sinegal learned the trade under which retail pioneer, regarded as the father of the warehouse club?
Sol Price
Sol Price opened the first Price Club in 1976; Sam Walton wrote that he borrowed as many ideas from Sol Price 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
The first Price Club opened in San Diego in 1976 on Morena Boulevard, inside a former aircraft hangar; Costco dates its own corporate history from that opening.
Q 11Price Club's first store was in a former manufacturing building once owned by which famous figure?
Howard Hughes
The Morena Boulevard building was a former hangar built for Howard Hughes's aircraft business; Price Club admitted only business owners at first, who had to show a resale licence.
Q 12In what year did Costco and Price Club agree to merge?
1993
Costco and Price Club agreed to merge in 1993, creating a combined company with 206 locations and about $16 billion in annual sales.
Q 13What name did the merged Costco and Price Club company use at first?
PriceCostco
The merged company traded as PriceCostco, and memberships became universal, so a card from either chain worked at both sets of warehouses.
Q 21In 2011, Costco's highest-volume store in the world was in which city?
Seoul
The Yangjae warehouse in Seoul was Costco's top-grossing location in 2011, outselling every US store although South Korea then had fewer than ten warehouses.
Q 22Under a company rule, no regular item may be marked up more than what percentage over cost?
14%
Costco caps markups at 14% on regular branded goods and 15% on Kirkland Signature items, which is why the company's overall net profit margin runs only about 2%.
Q 23Roughly how many distinct products does a typical Costco carry?
3,700
A typical Costco carries about 3,700 distinct products, against 30,000 or more in a conventional supermarket, stocking only one or two versions of each item and selling far more units.
Q 14Before merging with Costco, Price Club turned down a merger offer from which retail giant?
Walmart
Price Club rejected a merger approach from Walmart and chose Costco instead; Walmart's own warehouse chain, Sam's Club, went on to become Costco's chief US rival.
Q 15In which year did the merged company revert to plain 'Costco' as its name and stock symbol?
1997
In 1997 the company renamed itself Costco Companies Inc., adopted the COST ticker and rebranded the remaining Price Club warehouses; it became Costco Wholesale Corporation two years later.
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
Grocery bagger was Jim Sinegal's first retail job, taken as a student in the mid-1950s at a discount store whose founder became his mentor; he later ran Costco for nearly three decades.
Q 18Before Price Club, its founder had launched which discount chain in 1954?
FedMart
FedMart, opened in 1954, was bought by German retailer Hugo Mann, who forced its founder out in 1975; a year later he and his son Robert started Price Club.
Q 19Which city's Costco became the world's largest warehouse after a 2015 expansion?
Salt Lake City
The Salt Lake City warehouse grew to about 235,000 square feet in 2015, making it the largest Costco in the world at the time; a typical warehouse runs around 150,000.
Q 20The smallest Costco, at under 77,000 sq ft, is in which city?
Juneau
The Juneau, Alaska, warehouse at roughly 76,000 square feet is about half the size of a typical Costco, serving a state capital reachable only by air or sea.
Q 24In the early 2020s, which organisation's two titles outranked Costco Connection in US magazine circulation?
AARP
Only AARP The Magazine and the AARP Bulletin outranked Costco Connection in US circulation in the early 2020s; the magazine is mailed free to Executive members each month.
Q 25Costco began selling rotisserie chickens in 1994 amid the rising popularity of which restaurant chain?
Boston Market
Boston Market's rotisserie craze in the early 1990s inspired Costco to add its own rotisserie chicken in 1994; the birds became such a traffic driver that Costco later built its own poultry plant.
Q 26In 2019 Costco opened its own vertically integrated poultry factory in which state?
Nebraska
The Lincoln Premium Poultry plant in Fremont, Nebraska, opened in 2019 to process around two million chickens a week and keep the rotisserie chicken price steady.
Q 27Sinegal described Costco's constantly rotating stock as what kind of atmosphere?
Treasure-hunt
Treasure-hunt is the term Costco uses for its rotating stock of limited-time items; the idea is 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
Hebrew National supplied Costco's kosher franks until 2009, when supply problems and thin margins pushed Costco to make its own under the Kirkland Signature label to protect the combo price.
Q 29In 2013 US Costco food courts dropped Coca-Cola fountain drinks in favour of which company's products?
Pepsi
Costco's US food courts switched to Pepsi in 2013 after Coca-Cola raised its prices, helping hold the hot-dog combo price; Coca-Cola products returned to the food courts in 2025.
Q 30Which food-court item replaced the pretzel in 2009 because of slow sales?
Churro
The Churro took the pretzel's food-court slot in 2009 and lasted fifteen years before a double chocolate chunk cookie replaced it in 2024.