Americans travel the world only to wind up in Costco

Tommy Breaux and Danny Terrebonne have made Costco pilgrimages around the world, including this now-closed location in Melbourne, Australia.

CHIBA, Japan—Japan was the trip of a lifetime for Annette Kujak.

The 58-year-old retiree from Brownsville, Minn., loved the ancient temples in Tokyo, neon lights in Osaka and free-roaming deer in Nara.

The other highlight of her vacation was a concrete box here in suburbia, surrounded by the same gray asphalt she sees at home.

It was a Japanese outpost of Costco. “It ranks right up there with the temples,” she said.

As the retailer planted its flag in 13 foreign markets, its devoted American members have followed. Search online for Costco in Sweden or Taiwan, and you’ll find videos narrated in breathless wonder. Travelers hunt for regional souvenirs, soothe their homesickness and investigate a burning question: Is the hot dog different?

Annette Kujak, with her husband and son, said hitting Costco was a highlight of a Japanese vacation where they also visited ancient temples like the Sensō-ji in Tokyo.

For Kujak and others, Hawaii was the gateway drug. Mainlanders have long shopped for vacation staples at the chain’s tropical warehouses, where the aloha shirts and macadamia nuts had them dreaming of what treasures lay abroad.

Some may ask why Costco fans fly halfway across the planet to visit the same temple to excess they have back home. Their response: What better way to understand a culture than by seeing what locals buy in bulk?

“I’ll take the extra time and transportation to get to a Costco over standing in line for two hours to get into the Louvre,” said Tommy Breaux, a 66-year-old retiree in Houston who counts a suburban Paris location among his foreign conquests.

It isn’t that he and his husband, Danny Terrebonne, don’t appreciate a fine Bordeaux. They just want more of it, cheaper. “The first thing we do is go to Costco to purchase wine,” Terrebonne said.

The authentic Costco experience starts with the commute. Breaux and Terrebonne drove 45 minutes to the store in Villebon-sur-Yvette, just outside Paris. There, they observed a local appetite for American-style pancakes and apple pie. They gawked at the pallets of foie gras.

The card-carrying couple made a similar pilgrimage in Australia, where they were baffled by the jars of a seasoning called chicken salt. On visits to Costcos in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, they saw boxes of Jumpy’s, a kangaroo-shaped potato snack also flavored like chicken.

“Costconians,” as superfans call themselves, are getting more opportunities. Company executives recently said that of the roughly 30 new stores they plan to add annually, about half will be abroad. About a third of Costco’s 900 locations are already outside the U.S.

Tourists immediately notice that these international outlets are mostly carbon copies of home. The Iceland location might sell fish jerky, but the concrete floors, rotisserie chickens and stacks of Kirkland jeans scream Americana.

That uniformity is a security blanket for Joy Yip, a 47-year-old real-estate agent who recently visited a Costco near Tokyo. “We’re in a whole new country, but we feel safe because we see something that we’re familiar with,” she said.

The setting also acts as a controlled environment for cultural anthropology. Back home in Elk Grove, Calif., Yip steels herself in the parking lot before braving the chaos. But in Japan and South Korea, she witnessed the impossible: orderly lines for food samples.

Joy Yip, with her husband and daughter at a Costco outside Tokyo, said the familiarity provides a sense of safety.

“You don’t have like 5,000 people trying to bum-rush the sample person,” she said.

Costco members can use their cards worldwide. One popular overseas destination is in Chiba, outside Tokyo.

Kujak, the Minnesota retiree, began planning her visit here well before her 12-day trip in Japan, packing two empty suitcases to haul her spoils home.

On a recent afternoon, Kujak, her husband and their adult son left their hotel near Tokyo Disneyland for the 40-minute trip by train to Costco. She was sold before stepping inside: The store was two stories, with moving ramps designed to grip the shopping carts.

Annette Kujak loaded up on cosmetics and instant noodles at the Costco near Tokyo.

“Who doesn’t want a two-story Costco?” said Kujak, a former senior-care worker.

Inside, she loaded up on cosmetics and agonized over the instant noodles. “I had to bring my son-in-law some ramen,” she said.

Her husband, Steve Kujak, focused on immediate consumption. He answered the hot-dog question. “We thought it would be the same, but it was different,” said Kujak, a 59-year-old chemist. “In the U.S., they grind it so fine. It was more chunky.”

But the real highlight was the fruit. The green grapes he sampled were big and juicy—the best he could remember.

He was shocked when he returned for seconds and saw the sign: Product of USA.