Max Ellinger is such a big fan of Costco that he got a Kirkland Signature tattoo
Max Ellinger is such a big fan of Costco that he got a Kirkland Signature tattoo and celebrated his birthday there
Tom Salokov, 42 of Toronto, Canada, sports a tattoo celebrating Costco's $1.50 hot dog deal on his arm.
Alyssa Munoz’s family goes to Costco so often, she jokes they live there. The 34-year-old mother of three from San Jose even holds playdates at Costco.
Katie Staley threw her husband a surprise 40th birthday party at Costco
Adam Staley celebrated his 40th birthday at Costco
Beth Harwerth's Costco-themed save the date.

Few people love Costco as much as Max Ellinger. The proof is inked on his right arm. His only tattoo is the Kirkland Signature logo – the Costco house brand for everything from rotisserie chicken to laundry detergent.

Ellinger got it in 2019 after a friend convinced the Costco bakery to make a cake with the company logo by telling the staff Ellinger was such a big fan, he had a tattoo. When Costco asked for a photograph, Ellinger slid into a tattoo parlor chair and turned the little white lie into a permanent reality.

Like many Costco members, Ellinger’s devotion comes from weekly shopping treks with his parents. Roaming the familiar warehouse aisles in a new city comforted him after he left home. He became known around school as the guy who shepherded his college classmates there.

On his online dating profile, Ellinger had only one rule: No Sam’s Club members. His future husband knew their relationship was serious, not when they decided to get married but when he became Ellinger’s plus one on his Costco membership. And Ellinger only green-lit their recent move to Champaign, Illinois, after first confirming there was a Costco 12 minutes away.

“Kirkland Signature represents quality, value, integrity and treating other people well and that is resonant with me,” said Ellinger, 33, who works for a content marketing agency. “It carries a lot more meaning than a lot of tattoos.”

Ellinger isn’t the only one who wears Costco on his sleeve.

Tom Solakov, a 42-year-old from Toronto who worked for Costco before starting his graphic design career, got a tattoo of Costco’s $1.50 hot-dog-and-soda deal because he appreciated how the company treated its staffers. A photo of his tattoo got more than 23,000 likes on Instagram and 17,000 upvotes in a Costco subreddit.

The rise of retail fandom

Move over Swifties, groupies aren’t just for celebrities anymore. “Super fans” are forging unusually tight bonds with national brands, flashing their loyalty with tattoos and other symbols of that connection.

Even celebrities are brand fans. Musician Ed Sheeran famously has a tattoo of a Heinz Ketchup bottle on his arm.

“We have always had fandoms and we have always had brand fandoms, but they are growing and stronger now,” said Paul Booth, a media and popular culture professor at DePaul University who researches fandom.

Once the nerdy domain of sci-fi, fandom leapt from Star Trek conventions into the mainstream via the internet, giving people a gathering place to celebrate their collective love for something – be it videogames, TV shows, musical acts or sports teams.

Some 85% of Americans identify as a fan, according to Susan Kresnicka, a cultural anthropologist who studies fandom in the corporate sector.

Fandom has become a means of signaling our identity to others and bonding with like-minded spirits, Kresnicka said.

Buc-ee’s, Trader Joe’s and Aldi super fans

More and more of who we are is expressed by where we shop and what we buy – and not just from megabrands like Apple with pop-culture juice.

No longer a boring staple of the retail world, grocery stores have developed personalities that reflect how shoppers see themselves, what they care about and what they believe in.

On social media, “Wawa fam” rally around their love for the Pennsylvania-based convenience chain known for its hoagies, including the Gobbler, a Thanksgiving roll stuffed with hot turkey, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.

Die-hard Aldi treasure hunters greet one another like crows by “caw cawing” over “Aldi Finds” – a rotating selection of cheap impulse buys in a store aisle dubbed the “aisle of shame” at the German grocery chain.

Devotees of Buc-ee’s, the Texas-supersize convenience-store-and-gas-stop chain beloved for its famously clean restrooms, barbecued brisket and beaver statues, camp overnight to be the first ones through the doors of a new location, much like Apple groupies mobbed sidewalks for days to be the first with the new iPhone.

Fans of Wegmans, the family-run New York chain, call themselves “Wegmaniacs.” Shortly after the supermarket chain opened its first spot in Massachusetts in 2011, a local high school staged a musical about the community’s excitement including an in-store marriage proposal.

Trader Joe’s “stans” line up for hours to get their hands on viral mini tote bags emblazoned with the grocery chain's name and logo.

This brand solidarity can bridge divides and bring people together at a time of extreme polarization and increased isolation, fandom experts say.

“When somebody sees your Costco T-shirt or your Trader Joe’s bag, their eyes light up because people know they are meeting a kindred spirit and that, at some level, you have something pretty fundamental in common,” Kresnicka said. “It can be the start of a human connection where you’ve got a leg up on getting to know one another and actually being able to trust one another.”

The cult of Costco

Even in a world where supermarkets can stir a frenzy, Costco fans border on the obsessive.

They don’t shop around; they have a cult-like allegiance to their favorite spot. They dash off to Costco several times a week to cruise the aisles and munch on samples. They collect logo merch and monitor new drops on TikTok and outfit their pets in Kirkland Signature hoodies. They spend hours online debating everything from the ethics of Costco returns to giant cookies vs. churros in the food court.

Alyssa Munoz’s family goes to Costco so often, she jokes they live there. The 34-year-old mother of three from San Jose even holds playdates at Costco with the kids piled in one cart, groceries in another. The treat after checking out? Ice cream from the food court.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Munoz used to shop for others and would fill her camera roll taking pictures of bargains and cool new items. So she launched a Facebook group for Bay Area Costco members so they could see what was on shelves in local stores and trade hot tips. That’s how she found her Costco people, she says. Five years later, the Facebook group has 169,000 members.

“I don’t want to say Costco has defined me,” Munoz said, “but it has.”

Customers don’t just shop at Costco, they take pride in being associated with it, said Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang, associate professor of marketing at Lehigh University.

“In many ways, Costco functions like a club: It offers status and community, but instead of inflated luxury prices, the membership fee unlocks trusted products and a consistently positive shopping experience,” Wang said.

The secret sauce to that shopping experience is giving people a feeling of abundance, with a curated assortment of goods ranging from wagyu beef and Dubai chocolates to soap and toilet paper, marketing experts say.

“We become loyal to companies when they consistently deliver for us and when we feel excited by them,” said Lauren Beitelspacher, a marketing professor at Babson College. “Part of that comes from the idea of discovering something new but also from the comfort of knowing what you are going to get.”

For super fans, this combination has powerful psychological benefits. Jasmine Pak, a 30-year-old content creator from Anaheim, California, says Costco is how she practices self care.

“I shop at Costco religiously,” Pak said. “There are times I go to Costco and I don’t even buy anything. I’m there to cheer myself up. There's something in that Costco air, it just brings me a sense of peace.”

Claudia Chee, a 34-year-old content creator known as “Costco Claudia” on Instagram, refers to the store as her “safe space.” Each year, she takes an international trip to see Costco warehouses in other countries.

“If there’s no Costco, I’m not going,” she said. “That’s literally my standard.”

'Favorite place on earth'

For Costco partisans, the warehouse aisles are not just where they shop. It’s where they celebrate life’s milestones.

When planning a birthday party for her two kids last year, Tiffany Remington, 34, said she and her husband tried to think of a theme that would get them excited. The answer? Costco.

On weekly trips for groceries, their daughter Fei, 4, and son Khai, 2, love to snack on free samples and explore the aisles. So Remington, a content creator from Portland, Oregon, created junior executive member-themed cards for the guests and customized menu posters featuring her children photoshopped next to chicken bakes and hot dogs.

A cart offered an array of snacks the kids could “shop” for, and food offerings included samples of egg rolls served in muffin liners and classic food court staples like Costco pizza.

Last year when dreaming up a 40th birthday party for her husband, Katie Staley thought about the things that matter in his life: family and Costco, in that order.

Adam Staley, who hits his local store at least four days a week for samples and deals, talks about Costco as an addiction – albeit one that is good for his family’s health and their budget. His favorite wardrobe piece is a worn-out, chili-stained Kirkland logo hoodie. When the family recently moved, a major selling feature of their new house in Kansas City, Missouri, was that it was closer to Costco, less than a five-minute drive.

So Katie Staley sent out a secret message to friends and family members, inviting them to meet at Costco and spread out throughout the store so they could pretend to run into Adam. Then they all gathered in the food court with Costco pizza and sheet cake to surprise the father of three after checkout. The food court joined in singing "Happy Birthday." Shoppers passing by got slices of cake.

“I wasn’t expecting any of that,” Adam Staley said, “all of my friends and family right there in my favorite place on Earth: Costco.”

Even by these standards, some Costco fans’ dedication is next level.

After countless date nights spent wandering Costco aisles during executive member hours and dining on food-court pizza and hot dogs, Beth and Alec Harwerth decided there was no better location for their engagement photos.

Staff gave the couple access to an Overland Park, Kansas, warehouse after-hours, where a photographer captured the couple lovingly gazing at each other over a shopping cart carrying a 100-pack of Keurig pods, posing in front of a line of houseplants and wheeling across the store atop a bright orange flatbed.

The assistant general manager was “really cool about it,” Beth Harwerth, 27, said. "He walked around with a leaf blower and made sure there was no trash and all the boxes looked full.”

The Harwerths used the engagement photos for their save-the-date invitation designed to look like a Costco food-court menu and then served Costco cake at the wedding.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: These people love Costco more than you do. They have the tattoos to prove it

Reporting by Jessica Guynn and Bailey Schulz, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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