The main entrance of the Business Center at day. Photo by Cian Abad.
The Issaquah, Washington-based Costco Wholesale Corporation opened the doors to a brand new location in one of its longest-served cities on Feb. 1. Though the national chain has an almost four-decade history with this city — Anchorage’s Dimond Boulevard warehouse was only the tenth Costco when opened — Alaska’s first Costco Business Center is a different experience. This enterprise-focused parallel chain of Costco warehouses offers larger quantities with steeper bulk discounts as well as a number of exclusive items fit for commercial use. Same-day in-house delivery service and earlier store hours are also key features.
A day after its public grand opening, the store was flooded with shoppers — baptized by the franchise-standard industrial heaters tuned to counteract the chill of the Tikahtnu parking lot outside. An immediate difference between this store and its more pedestrian consumer counterparts were the show-floor-style front kiosks. Large commercial refrigerators and chest freezers took the space occupied by flat screen TVs and laptops in standard Costco warehouses.
Behind the front registers were lines of carts stocked with bulk goods. The Northern Light spoke to a couple hauling dry foods to the manual checkout. Local resident Aoua was generally impressed by the prices offered — mostly on frequently-used bulk foods like instant noodles. Though she wasn’t the business customer the store is optimized for, the standard membership still granted her and similar patrons entry.
Behind them and around the checkout sat large pallets stacked with various snack foods and candies — offering them in fold-out display containers commonly seen on store shelves. Past these features – and a decidedly more vertical liquor section – sat rows of commercial food-grade cleaning supplies, large quantities of shelf-stable food and assorted commercial furniture and accouterments. Display items were more sparse than standard Costco stores — the few that were displayed included food-service prep tables, mop buckets, open signs and a display leg of Spanish jamón.
These business-to-business-exclusive items constituted the majority of bespoke goods at the Business Center. Buffet service trays sat across the store from mop heads. Multi-gallon containers of food-grade cleaners were only several aisles down from rows of commercial appliances. TNL spoke to another shopper near the soft drink section at the store’s rear.
“We were looking at the [food prep appliances], and that’s gonna be useful for the sorta stuff Alaskans do,” said Joel, a local resident still browsing with a mostly-empty cart. He was referring to rows of large, mostly stainless-steel appliances used for vacuum-sealing, meat-packing, freeze-drying and other food processing practices common in remote communities of Alaska.
Most shelf-stable goods sat in their own corners of the store. Notably present were five-gallon pails of Kikkoman soy sauce and opaque four-pound jars of Kalamata olives. When not in dedicated containers, these goods were stocked in standard wholesale vessels but collated in pallet-style boxes for easier bulk pickup, such as Kewpie mayonnaise.
Journeying to the store’s rear, past the array of open produce and bulk-quantity frozen foods — we entered the room-scale combined refrigerator. This wing of the store housed meat, dairy and produce in one continuous room, each section marked by plastic flaps hung from the ceiling. This is a unique staple of the location — contrasting with the distant, segregated refrigerators of its consumer counterparts.
While items in the refrigerated section were set apart by their quantity and price, the meats displayed outside were novel for their diversity. Whole halal lambs hung inside of nearby refrigerators, offering a stark contrast with the meat sections of other Costco warehouses in town.
“We’re gonna offer a lot of different items that are very unique to Alaska and at considerable savings to them, especially out of the bush communities [in rural Alaska],” said manager and 25-year Costco veteran Jim Griffith. “[The Business Center has] been able to offer them a lot of great value to their staples, their soaps, paper towels, just your normal food items.”
Returning to the front, we encountered two more shoppers browsing the large stainless steel commercial refrigerators near the AT&T kiosk.
“We just walked in the door, but I mean it had the right soup container we needed, it has the meat station, basically everything we need,” said Kimberly Lemish, who owns City Grind — an under-construction coffeehouse and sandwich shop in the Anchorage City Hall downtown.
The visibly-excited Lemish was relishing in the opportunities for her new store’s kitchen buildout, which she noted was a key advantage of the in-person experience over all-online retail. “I can get stuff here instead of going on Amazon, and actually see it before I buy it.”
“I think a lot of our excitement is generated from our appliance kiosks,” said Griffith in an earlier remark, “Because that’s commercial-style appliances sometimes they can’t even get in the state of Alaska.”
Between the same-day statewide delivery and wholesale-writ-large quantities, Costco’s 27th Business Center has brought the warehouse chain even further into the state’s fold. After the abrupt closure of the Tikhatnu and Dimond Sam’s Club locations in 2018, Costco using one of those former spaces for this expansion might read as a victory lap in an age where Costco dominates global market share for warehouse clubs and Sam’s — it’s chief competitor — continues to shed store locations.
“I’m super excited [about] what we’re gonna be able to offer the Alaska community,” said Griffith.
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