What does Wyoming and West Virginia have against Costco?
cool but wouldn’t it make more sense to bin by whole numbers?
Damn I’m from Vermont and we have 1 Costco, but still have a higher “score” than any of the surrounding states.
Something doesn’t seem quite right here. Manitoba’s population is approx 1.5 million and there’s 5 Costcos in Winnipeg alone.Â
5/1.5 = 3.33
Unless I’m missing something?
The most profitable Costco in the world is in Hawaii!
They understand their customer base very well.
Thank you so much for including the per capita data. Most people forget that!
this is really cool, but I’d like to see a map of the distances between two nearest Costcos.
Some are just a few miles apart, others must be hundreds of miles apart. Or km, because Canada and Mexico. Maybe weigh the distance by population density…
So this is how I find out we have Costco in Mexico
It is pretty interesting that the highest costco per capita rates occur in Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Montana and Hawaii kind of make sense to me. They have chunks of population that are split up. Montana by distance and mountain passes, Hawaii by literal water.
Kauai has a Costco even though it only has like 75k people who live there (although tourists buy a LOT of stuff there too) because you can’t just hop over to Oahu. Once you are going through the logistics effort of stocking your locations on Oahu, it isn’t that much more of a heavy lift to hit the other islands and each one is a literally captive audience, so you aren’t cannibalizing from nearby stores.
Montana’s 5 costcos sit roughly in the 5 largest metros/counties (skipping Great Falls)…but each of those towns are at least a couple hour drive from each other. The population is fairly spread out . I live near Kalispell which just built a brand new even bigger costco because I guess they felt the old one wasn’t cutting it. It gets a ton of traffic down from canada in search of cheaper prices as well as rural customers loading up whole truckloads of stuff to drive far away.
But even though they wanted a bigger one, I never felt the old Kalispell costco was anywhere near as crazy as big city/suburban costcos because it just doesn’t serve as many people.
Alaska I’m not familiar with but I assume it is sort of the same way. Fairbanks and Juneau are too isolated so they get their own.
This is just a graph of where the best places to live is
need more in NC please. sams club is nice but i want costco
I wish they built one more in my town. The two in the area I love in are always packed and the parking lots are nightmare. That might be the case for all Costco parking lots though lol
Wait, why is there no Costco in Wyoming? Or West Virginia for that matter.
*hoping for a Rapid City Costco*
Crazy that their Ohio, Pennsylvania and NY counts are so low. Seems like the ideal socio/demographic areas for their success. Maybe Sams already has a stronghold in NE?
I’m within a 5-10 minute drives to 5 Costco locations lol, luckily the closest one is a Costco Business Center which I frequent the most, buy bulk and get more for your money.
I get better coverage by Costco than I do from the House of Representatives. And they don’t gerrymander either. Costco is the best.
Everyone in Wyoming goes to Costco either in Billings, Fort Collins, or North SLC.
This one little dot has 4 Costcos, including the busiest/most profitable Costco in the world.
Damn wr got a lot of them here in Alberta
So are there just like 8 Costcos in Alaska and literally no other stores?
Not surprised about CA – I have 3 within 20min of me in LA!
Edit: this does not even include another Business Center location!
I’m surprised by how few there are on the East Coast. I get that the warehouse model might be hard in the more densely populated cities, but there are successful ones in NYC proper. We really like to shop there, but the closest one is more than an hour drive away which really discourages us from making the trip often enough.
![[OC] Costco Locations Per 1,000,000 people in North America](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/l7riiwkcez7g1-1920x1024.jpeg)
25 comments
Sources: http://www.costco.com/sitemaps/warehouses-by-state
http://www.costco.ca/w/-/locations
http://www.costco.com.mx/store-finder
2025 population estimates
Costco Business Centers were included in the data
Made in ArcPro
What does Wyoming and West Virginia have against Costco?
cool but wouldn’t it make more sense to bin by whole numbers?
Damn I’m from Vermont and we have 1 Costco, but still have a higher “score” than any of the surrounding states.
Something doesn’t seem quite right here. Manitoba’s population is approx 1.5 million and there’s 5 Costcos in Winnipeg alone.Â
5/1.5 = 3.33
Unless I’m missing something?
The most profitable Costco in the world is in Hawaii!
They understand their customer base very well.
Thank you so much for including the per capita data. Most people forget that!
this is really cool, but I’d like to see a map of the distances between two nearest Costcos.
Some are just a few miles apart, others must be hundreds of miles apart. Or km, because Canada and Mexico. Maybe weigh the distance by population density…
So this is how I find out we have Costco in Mexico
It is pretty interesting that the highest costco per capita rates occur in Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Montana and Hawaii kind of make sense to me. They have chunks of population that are split up. Montana by distance and mountain passes, Hawaii by literal water.
Kauai has a Costco even though it only has like 75k people who live there (although tourists buy a LOT of stuff there too) because you can’t just hop over to Oahu. Once you are going through the logistics effort of stocking your locations on Oahu, it isn’t that much more of a heavy lift to hit the other islands and each one is a literally captive audience, so you aren’t cannibalizing from nearby stores.
Montana’s 5 costcos sit roughly in the 5 largest metros/counties (skipping Great Falls)…but each of those towns are at least a couple hour drive from each other. The population is fairly spread out . I live near Kalispell which just built a brand new even bigger costco because I guess they felt the old one wasn’t cutting it. It gets a ton of traffic down from canada in search of cheaper prices as well as rural customers loading up whole truckloads of stuff to drive far away.
But even though they wanted a bigger one, I never felt the old Kalispell costco was anywhere near as crazy as big city/suburban costcos because it just doesn’t serve as many people.
Alaska I’m not familiar with but I assume it is sort of the same way. Fairbanks and Juneau are too isolated so they get their own.
This is just a graph of where the best places to live is
need more in NC please. sams club is nice but i want costco
I wish they built one more in my town. The two in the area I love in are always packed and the parking lots are nightmare. That might be the case for all Costco parking lots though lol
Wait, why is there no Costco in Wyoming? Or West Virginia for that matter.
*hoping for a Rapid City Costco*
Crazy that their Ohio, Pennsylvania and NY counts are so low. Seems like the ideal socio/demographic areas for their success. Maybe Sams already has a stronghold in NE?
I’m within a 5-10 minute drives to 5 Costco locations lol, luckily the closest one is a Costco Business Center which I frequent the most, buy bulk and get more for your money.
I get better coverage by Costco than I do from the House of Representatives. And they don’t gerrymander either. Costco is the best.
Everyone in Wyoming goes to Costco either in Billings, Fort Collins, or North SLC.
https://preview.redd.it/es2f8vvt508g1.jpeg?width=180&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b550b15afc4a1304c30338c17b9a63c44df5adab
This one little dot has 4 Costcos, including the busiest/most profitable Costco in the world.
Damn wr got a lot of them here in Alberta
So are there just like 8 Costcos in Alaska and literally no other stores?
Not surprised about CA – I have 3 within 20min of me in LA!
Edit: this does not even include another Business Center location!
I’m surprised by how few there are on the East Coast. I get that the warehouse model might be hard in the more densely populated cities, but there are successful ones in NYC proper. We really like to shop there, but the closest one is more than an hour drive away which really discourages us from making the trip often enough.
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