Salt Lake City is now home to the world’s largest Costco warehouse store.
As the Deseret News reports, the first-of-its-kind, hybrid business center-consumer warehouse measures 235,000 s.f. The new space is geared specifically for commercial and institutional customers.
“We decided to add a business center and combined it with a (traditional consumer) warehouse for a hybrid,” GM Craig Jamieson told the newspaper. “Currently, we’re the largest Costco on the planet.”
Prior to this newly expanded location, the Salt Lake store had generally operated as any other of the company’s locations. Originally opened in 1994, the Salt Lake store was about 165,000 s.f. in total space, but the company launched a new concept by adding 70,000 s.f. of new space in its business center, claiming the lot directly north of the building, located at 1818 S. 300 West.
The new space includes 2,700 additional items, including large pallets of soft drinks, nonperishables as well as new freezers with whole lambs and whole roasting pigs. In addition, there are three new coolers, each measuring 3,000 s.f., with everything from eggs to produce to meats and several varieties of cheese, the News reports.
The new space is geared specifically for commercial and institutional customers like coffee shops, schools and universities, among others.
“The focus is on convenience stores, offices (and) restaurants,” Jamieson told the paper. “We also added delivery as part of that process.”
He also said that the new business center opens at 7 a.m. to accommodate its business-oriented member base. Other members are allowed to shop during normal operating hours. The store also added about 50 new employees, he said.
The typical Costco warehouse store measures about 148,000 s.f. on average, Jamieson told the paper. But the new hybrid store is nearly 50 percent larger and could be a test model for future potential expansion in other similar markets, he said.
Currently, the company operates 11 other business centers around the country, with more planned, he said.
The official grand reopening for the Salt Lake City store scheduled for Nov. 12.
Costco is headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, and operates more than 670 warehouse stores worldwide.
