If you haven’t heard yet, Costco has now surpassed Whole Foods Market in organic sales. It happened a little while back, and it was a quiet race for the win.
Sales of organic products at Costco were $4 billion in 2015 alone. The same year, Whole Foods Market did $3.6 billion.
Keep in mind though, when looking at Costco’s massive organic sales of $4 billion — their total sales that same year were $114 billion, so it’s still relatively small chunk of their business.
Many have experienced Costco quietly urging brands to switch to organic product lines (instead of conventional or non-GMO) whenever possible. Costco hasn’t, however, taken any official stance on organic products company wide.
In fact, their organic food demand is so high that some of their suppliers are having trouble keeping up. To help ease the stress on the supply chain, Costco is trying to invest in their farmers to help increase production.
“Now, organic farmers can’t grow produce fast enough to supply the retailer. To help nudge supply in the right direction, Costco is lending money to farmers, allowing them to buy land and equipment to grow more organic produce.” Source
At the same time, from the consumers perspective, more buyers are now used to buying organic foods from Costco. It has now become a normal aspect of their everyday life.
“The organic trade group says more than 30% of organic-food buyers in a recent survey said ‘it’s not unusual’ for them to buy the products at a warehouse club, a 10 percentage-point jump from a year ago.” Source
Even more wild, “…that means one out of every ten dollars spent on organic foods is spent at Costco.” Source
Keep up the good work Costco!