Costco ended fiscal 2026 with digitally enabled sales above 33 billion dollars, growing more than 20 percent, and it did so while adding two more delivery marketplaces to a model built on members walking into a warehouse. As of 5 November 2026, Uber Eats has moved from 17 states to nationwide coverage and DoorDash has rolled out alongside the existing Instacart partnership, with average delivery times under an hour across the three and most same-day orders completing within 45 minutes. The question management keeps getting is whether that shifts sales or adds them.
Two more marketplaces inside one membership model
The structure of the decision is unusual for a retailer that has spent four decades refusing to be anything other than a warehouse. Costco is not building its own last-mile fleet or a network of small fulfilment centres; it is renting the delivery capacity of three platforms that already compete for the same suburban shopper. That keeps capital expenditure pointed at warehouses and keeps the membership proposition intact, but it hands the customer experience, the delivery window and part of the margin to a third party.
Management's framing on the fourth-quarter call was that the marketplace sales are largely incremental, with limited impact on the core warehouse grocery business. Customers use delivery for fill-in purchases while continuing their regular warehouse visits, and different platforms attract different shoppers. If that reading holds, the marketplaces add shopping occasions without cannibalising the trip that justifies the membership fee.
What 33 billion dollars of digitally enabled sales contains
The digital line is now big enough to matter on its own. Digitally enabled comparable sales rose 19.5 percent in the quarter, or 19.8 percent excluding foreign exchange, with site and app traffic up 30 percent. Pharmacy, home furnishings, small electrics, hardware, housewares, domestics and health and beauty were among the strongest digital categories, which is a different mix from the food and sundries that dominate the warehouse floor.
| Metric | Fiscal 2026 fourth quarter |
|---|---|
| Digitally enabled comparable sales | Up 19.5 percent |
| Site and app traffic | Up 30 percent |
| Digitally enabled sales, full year | Above 33 billion dollars, up more than 20 percent |
| Digitally enabled sales, September | Up 19 percent |
| Total comparable sales | Up 9.4 percent on traffic plus 3.3 percent and ticket plus 5.9 percent |
Read the mix carefully. A product listing for a television or a piece of jewellery behaves very differently from a listing for milk: the first is a considered purchase where the app competes with every other e-commerce site, the second is a replenishment item where speed decides. Costco's digital growth is coming partly from categories where it can ship nationally and partly from categories where a marketplace can deliver locally, and the two require different operational answers.
Why the marketplace line stays incremental
Incremental is a claim that can be tested. The first test is basket composition: if delivery orders are dominated by fill-in items rather than the bulk packs that define a warehouse trip, the marketplace is serving a trip the warehouse was never going to win. The second is member behaviour over time: if delivery users keep visiting the warehouse at the same frequency, the channel is additive; if visits fall, the channel is a substitution with an extra fee attached.
Fill-in trips, not stock-up runs
A warehouse trip is a planned event built around a large basket: the member drives, parks, walks a 40,000-square-foot floor and leaves with a month of paper goods. A delivery order through a marketplace inverts every part of that. It is small, urgent and unplanned, which is why management describes it as fill-in demand. The two trips can coexist because they are triggered by different needs, and the risk only appears when the small trip starts replacing items that used to be added to the big one.
A younger shopper arrives through the app
Management noted that users of the newer marketplaces tend to be considerably younger than the overall member base. That matters more than the order value, because the membership model depends on recruiting members young and keeping them for decades. If a delivery order is the first contact with the brand, the acquisition cost of that member falls, and the renewal rate becomes the metric that decides whether the marketplace was worth it.
Warehouses and the digital line move together
Costco ended the year with 939 warehouses after opening 25 net new locations, and it plans 33 openings in fiscal 2027 including five relocations for a net 28. Membership fee income rose 7.3 percent to 1.849 billion dollars, paid members reached 84.1 million, up 3.8 percent, and paid executive memberships rose 9.4 percent to 42.3 million. Renewal rates were 92.3 percent in the United States and Canada and 89.8 percent worldwide.
| Company | Digital or e-commerce growth | Same-day or fast delivery |
|---|---|---|
| Costco | Digitally enabled comparable sales up 19.5 percent | Three marketplaces, average delivery under an hour |
| Walmart | US e-commerce up 24 percent | Fast delivery up 48 percent, sub-30-minute in 38 markets |
| Target | Digital comparable sales up 8.7 percent | Same-day delivery up more than 25 percent |
The comparison is instructive because the three retailers are buying the same capability in different ways. Walmart uses stores as fulfilment nodes and has pushed delivery times below 30 minutes in 38 markets; Target leans on same-day services from its store base; Costco rents capacity from marketplaces and keeps its warehouses as warehouses. The first two convert store density into delivery speed, the third converts brand traffic into marketplace orders. Each carries a different fixed cost and a different margin profile.
What links them is that the digital line no longer grows on its own. Every additional digital order needs either a store, a warehouse or a marketplace behind it, and the choice of which one determines whether the growth is profitable. For Costco the constraint is that its warehouse footprint is deliberately sparse, so marketplace capacity is the only way to reach a member who wants a delivery in 45 minutes without adding a building. That constraint is also the clearest industry trend in the numbers: consumer demand for speed is rising faster than store networks can be built, so every retailer is choosing which asset to rent, which to own and which to leave alone.
FAQ
Does delivery through marketplaces cannibalise warehouse sales?
Management said the marketplace sales have been largely incremental with limited impact on the core warehouse grocery business. The reasoning is that customers use delivery for fill-in purchases while continuing regular warehouse visits. That claim can be tested by tracking warehouse visit frequency among members who adopt delivery.
Why use three marketplaces instead of building a delivery operation?
Building last-mile capacity would add fixed cost to a model that keeps capital expenditure pointed at warehouses. Renting capacity from Instacart, Uber Eats and DoorDash gives national coverage without owning the fleet, at the cost of a revenue share and less control over the delivery experience.
What does the digital mix say about category growth?
Digital growth is concentrated in pharmacy, home furnishings, small electrics, hardware and health and beauty rather than in food. Those categories ship well and carry higher ticket values, which supports category growth without requiring local delivery capacity, while food remains the anchor of the warehouse trip.
What should a brand watch in the next quarter?
Two numbers: digitally enabled comparable sales, which show whether the channel keeps growing after the marketplace expansion annualises, and paid member counts, which show whether the channel is recruiting the younger shoppers the marketplaces are said to attract.
