Caitlin Johnson, a 34-year-old advertising executive from Long Island, owns two refrigerators to house her Costco hauls. She takes home eight out of every ten samples she tries. She once walked past a baked cauliflower station twice, watched other shoppers rave about it, caved, and left with two packages. "Wow. That's the first time I've admitted that out loud," she told USA TODAY.
Johnson is not an outlier. She is the model customer, the exact shopper Costco's free sample program was built to create.
Behind the friendly folding tables and the tiny paper cups sits one of the most effective retail marketing operations in America. Costco Wholesale, with 145 million card-carrying members, runs its sample stations not as a courtesy but as a revenue engine. And the behavioral science behind the program explains why millions of otherwise disciplined adults lose their composure over a cube of cheese on a toothpick.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, laid out the business case plainly:
"Shoppers who sample something in store are way more likely to buy the product. It's basically a marketing activity that boosts revenue."
Saunders also described a broader strategic benefit. "There is a real commercial impetus behind samples but they are also part of the appeal of Costco and have a halo effect of showing Costco looks after its customers," he said.
That halo effect is deliberate. Club Demonstration Services, the company that manages in-store samples for Costco, takes care to engineer what the program's defenders call "an expertly flavorful bite." The idea is simple: give someone one perfect taste, and they'll buy the whole box. Costco itself declined to comment on the financials of its sample program, or anything else about it.
The company's silence is telling. Costco won't say how much it spends on samples, how much revenue they generate, or how the program fits into its broader margin strategy. What we do know is that Costco's membership dues, paid by those 145 million cardholders, pad the company's bottom line and enable lower shelf prices. The samples are part of the membership bargain, a lure wrapped in generosity.
Behavioral economists have studied why free samples work so well, and the answers should make any self-aware consumer a little uncomfortable.
Aner Tal, a behavioral economist and visiting professor at the University of Maryland, has described how an initial taste of a new food creates a "taste memory" that whets the appetite and reduces the guesswork of purchasing. You don't have to wonder whether you'll like it. You already know. The sample removes the one barrier between you and your wallet.
Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, has explored the allure of free items more broadly. A single sample morsel, he has explained, primes people to view the product as unique and special. Free samples also create a social commitment, an impulse to reciprocate. Someone gave you something for nothing. Now you feel obligated to buy.
Ariely once illustrated this principle by hiring a tattoo artist to give out free tattoos at a party. People who had never contemplated getting a tattoo got one on the spot. The power of "free" overrode years of settled preference. If that works for permanent ink, a $12 bag of frozen cauliflower bites doesn't stand a chance.
Studies linked in the USA TODAY report confirm the broader finding: free samples thrill shoppers and keep them coming back. Costco temporarily suspended its sample program during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the outcry from members made clear just how central the ritual had become to the shopping experience.
The shoppers who spoke to USA TODAY were remarkably candid about their own behavior, and remarkably unbothered by it.
Johnson, the Long Island ad executive, captured the dynamic with a line that could double as Costco's unofficial motto: "I don't tell Costco what I need. Costco tells me what I need." On the baked cauliflower that finally won her over, she said:
"Stay with me here. I walked right past it twice. But I kept watching these people and they're like, 'Oh my gosh, this is amazing.' So finally, I'm like, 'all right, there's something to this.'"
She walked out with two of them.
Josh Sneed, a 49-year-old standup comedian from Cincinnati, described a more calculated approach. Sneed, who used to drive an hour to reach a Costco before one opened ten minutes from his house, admitted to gaming the sample system with a method he seemed both proud and sheepish about:
"This is how gluttonous I am. I'll taste something and like it and I'll know that my son won't. So I'll tell him I think he'll like it just so that he'll take a little bite and then hand the rest to me and I can have a second serving. I hate that I have a method for Costco samples but, hey, you and I are talking for USA TODAY so it can't be that bad, right?"
Sneed also confessed to a peculiar performance at the sample table, pretending he's never encountered a product he already knows and loves. "What is this? Cheese? Am I saying that right? Cheese? Oh, that's good," he joked.
Katelyn Melli, a 28-year-old personal trainer from New Jersey, shops Costco with her husband, also a personal trainer, and their 9-month-old son. She reads ingredients before buying and, as a rule, does not take samples home. "They're all terrible for you, but it's like, they're out, we might as well try them," she said. "Just one bite isn't going to hurt us."
Then came the organic mango salsa on Siete chips. "It was so good," Melli said. She bought it on a Monday. By Wednesday, it was nearly gone.
Rules, it turns out, are no match for a well-engineered sample.
David and Susan Schwartz, co-authors of "The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z," sampled Costco products around the globe while researching their book. In Asia, they tried vodka at a Costco warehouse. In Sweden, a vendor in a pleated chef hat carved prosciutto from a whole leg.
"It's clear that the sampling is one of the most popular things that goes on in the warehouse," David Schwartz said. His wife Susan added simply: "Samples appeal to everybody." She credited the program with getting her hooked on Costco croissants. Her grandson discovered madras lentils through a sample station.
Jesse Fernandez, a 41-year-old comedian and self-described Costco super fan from San Mateo, California, mostly skips the sample lines. He makes exceptions for comfort foods, pizza, macaroni and cheese. He rarely buys what he tastes. "The best samples are the things that are the worst for me," Fernandez said. "I just say thank you, Costco, for this little treat. Then I go buy my very boring low-sodium, low-cholesterol, low-anything food."
Costco's membership model has come under scrutiny from shoppers who feel the company has quietly trimmed other perks even as it leans harder into the sample program's psychological pull.
For every shopper who treats the sample aisle like a buffet, there's someone who finds the whole spectacle off-putting. One anonymous Facebook user described a strategy that would make a logistics planner proud: "I grab one. Do a loop around the aisle. Grab another one. Do another loop. Repeat until full. Move on to the next sample."
That kind of behavior has consequences. On Reddit, one anonymous Costco employee posted a blunt message: "Members, we are not your maids." Vendors have expressed frustration with shoppers making custom requests at sample stations, as if the free table were a made-to-order counter.
In rare cases, the frenzy has escalated to physical altercations at sample stations. The details are sparse, but the pattern is real enough that it surfaces in employee complaints and online discussions. Costco's willingness to enforce store policies in other areas, receipt checks, membership rules, has not visibly extended to policing sample-station conduct.
Not everyone participates. One Reddit user asked: "Anybody else here that never eats the free samples? I don't think I've touched any of them in 20 years." A respondent agreed: "Never. I hate them. I know that's a semi-unpopular opinion, but the absolutely feral behavior of other members around the sample tables just puts me off."
But even the holdouts aren't immune. One self-described never-sampler tried Thai Mango Gummies on a whim. "They were actually pretty good, so I bought some," the user admitted. The program had claimed another convert.
One TikTok user, @tuckergenal, posted a video about consuming nothing but Costco sample calories for a period, a stunt that, whatever its nutritional merits, illustrated the program's cultural grip.
Costco's refusal to discuss its sample program in any detail is worth noting. The company will not disclose costs, will not discuss strategy, and will not comment on the behavioral research that underpins the entire operation. For a company that sells transparency as part of its brand, low markups, honest pricing, the Kirkland Signature promise, the silence around its most visible in-store marketing tool is a gap.
What we can say is this: the sample program works because it is designed to work. The bite is engineered. The psychology is studied. The reciprocity impulse is real. And 145 million members walk through those doors already primed to say yes.
None of this makes Costco a villain. The company offers genuine value, and its membership model has earned fierce loyalty for good reason. But the sample program is not charity. It is not hospitality. It is a commercial strategy executed with precision, and the fact that it feels like a gift is exactly the point.
Free markets run on willing buyers and willing sellers. But a willing buyer ought to know when the sale started before he reached the register, and at Costco, it started the moment he picked up that little paper cup.