If there’s one thing we’ve come to learn about the Boise area, it’s that they’re passionate about Costco! Whether they’re changing items available in their store, foods for purchase in their food court or simply changing up their gas station hours…our Costco stories are some of the most read of 2025.
And that’s totally fair. In the Treasure Valley, there’s really no other retailer that you can compare to Costco. Target, Fred Meyer and Walmart could be considered challengers on a general merchandise level. Albertsons and Winco, more so, are rivals on the grocery side of things, but do any of these retailers compete with Costco on a bulk product level? We don’t think so.
When you look at American retail from a 30,000 foot view, Walmart owned Sam’s Club is really the only comparable direct competitor that Costco has. While this author has been in Idaho for close to 15 years, they grew up in a part of Northeast Ohio where Sam’s Club was THE go to warehouse destination. While the location of the warehouse in her hometown bounced around, she remembers going shopping at Sam’s since birth. Meanwhile, the first Costco location in the state didn’t exist until we were in the seventh grade…