It’s hard not to admire the work of Irish novelist Colm Toibin. I’ve devoured three of his novels — “The Master,” “The Magician,” and “Brooklyn” — and would be hard pressed to name a writer whose judgment I admire more.
So it came as little surprise when Toibin issued some social media paeans to the warehouse club Costco. In a TikTok of his first-ever visit to Costco, Toibin professed to be intrigued by the books table, which had copies of his latest novel “Long Island” for sale and is “in-between water, and underwear, and your barbecue, your charcoal. It’s a good place for books because it’s in-between things people want.”
In a separate Instagram post, Toibin marveled over Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken: “Just have a look at this chicken, just look at the size of it. The amount of chickenness in the chicken.”
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Toibin is hardly the first or the last celebrity to haunt the soulless, ceiling-high racks of the drearily appointed Issaquah, Wash.-based warehouse club. Just a few days ago, a TikToker spotted Michelle Obama at a California Costco, hawking PLEZi FiZZ, a somewhat less sugary carbonated kids drink produced by a healthy food startup that she cofounded.
Maybe Costco really is the center of the universe.
I came close to that conclusion after listening to Acquired’s three-hour (!) podcast on Costco. Acquired, cohosted by two savvy young investors, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, is famous for its none-dare-wish-them-deeper dives into corporate reality. For instance, their Nike podcast ran to just under four hours.
Now I feel like I know a thing or two about Costco, and to know it is to admire it. Toibin was onto something with the chickens, by the way. Costco doesn’t buy chickens, they famously raise their own, and more successfully than most poultry manufacturers. Gilbert told his audience, “I want to do a whole episode on Costco chickens,” and he didn’t sound as if he was kidding.
According to Gilbert and Rosenthal, Costco is an ethically managed company that exists to serve its customers, its employees, and its shareholders, in that order. Paradoxes abound. You might think that economically disadvantaged shoppers would favor Costco, but, according to Acquired, the company’s customer base is quite affluent, with a household income of about $125,000 a year, more than the US median income of about $80,000 in 2023.
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More facts: Costco is the world’s largest seller of fine wines, defined as bottles that retail for between $20 and $300. Costco’s in-house brand, Kirkland Signature (I own a Kirkland jersey and a pair of boots) has greater revenue than Nike.
Because Costco pays higher wages than its competitors, it has a low labor turnover rate (7 percent versus industry numbers that can reach 50 percent or higher). It also boasts low “shrinkage,” retailese for loss of inventory. Customer theft is low, Gilbert and Rosenthal note, because many of the store items are too large to steal and why would you steal from a club you’ve paid at least $60 to join?
Two more oddities: Costco has had a Twitter/X account since 2013 and never posted. Furthermore, Costco has never laid off workers. Gilbert and Rosenthal call it “a noble company,” a phrase you don’t hear very often.
Like Colm Toibin, I’m just looking for an excuse to tell my own Costco stories. Years ago, an upscale ophthalmologist — he boasted of being the eye doctor to the Red Sox, a claim you might want to keep to yourself — told me to buy my eyeglasses at Costco because they would be just as good and half the price.
That was the beginning of a long and generally fruitful relationship. I bought a car, with a decent albeit not earth-shattering discount, through the Costco Auto Program. Last year, around the time CVS workers were threatening to strike over poor working conditions, I transferred my prescriptions to Costco, so far without a problem.
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As noted, I do buy clothing there, but that’s not really something to brag about. The chickens, on the other hand …
Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him @imalexbeamyrnot.
