Hot dogs and chickens by the millions: Just how big was Costco’s 2023?

With hundreds of millions of products sold, Costco’s 2023 fiscal year was as big as its warehouses, company officials told shareholders at its annual meeting Thursday.

The meeting, held virtually, was presided over for the first time by the new Chief Executive Ron Vachris. On Jan. 1, Vachris took the helm from the longtime CEO Craig Jelinek.

Vachris started his four-decade tenure at Costco as a forklift driver and had been the company’s president and chief operating officer until Jelinek stepped down.

In the meeting, Vachris told shareholders about the company’s fiscal year results, sharing the number of the iconic hot dog-and-soda combos sold, the number of Costco stores that opened and how many $4.99 rotisserie chickens the Issaquah-based company sold in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 3.

Costco sold just under 200 million hot dog-and-soda combos. In the previous year, it sold 156 million.

Vachris said the company aims to sell 200 million combos during the current fiscal year. “We came up a little short ... last year, but I can assure you we’re all going to work hard, that we will achieve that number this year,” he said.

The rotisserie chickens were also a hot item. Costco sold 137 million of them, Vachris said. That marked an increase of 20 million rotisserie chickens sold compared with the 2022 fiscal year.

“Our service deli,” Vachris told investors, “had a very strong year.”

[Costco tests membership card scanners at store entrances]

The number of memberships also was up. Costco had 71 million paid household members at the end of the fiscal year, up 7.9% compared with the prior year, and nearly 128 million cardholders, an increase of 7.6%. Membership renewals were at a historic high of 90.5%, Vachris said.

Costco collected $4.7 billion in membership fees in the year, according to its annual report filed in October, an increase of 8% compared with the previous year.

Costco shoppers had more locations to buy from in the 2023 fiscal year, as Costco opened 23 warehouses, Vachris said. In the 2024 fiscal year, the company expects to open 31 locations. Since September, Vachris said, Costco has opened 11 locations. The company has a total of 872 warehouses globally.

Opening new warehouses is key to Costco’s net sales growth. The company stated that its net sales of $237.7 billion increased 7% in fiscal year 2023 compared with the previous year in part because of “sales at new warehouses opened in 2022 and 2023,” according to its annual report.

Vachris said during the meeting that membership card scans at the entrance of select stores, including in Issaquah, are meant to improve guest experience at checkout. The scans are still in limited tests and have done “very well,” he said.

Employees now check membership cards by hand at the store’s entrance and at checkout. According to Costco’s website, since expanding its self-checkout, the company has noticed that nonmembers have been using cards that don’t belong to them.

“We’re able to verify the membership, make sure that the renewals are done,” Vachris said. “It just speeds things up for all the members at the front register.”

The machines scan the bar code on the back of the membership card, showing the membership record, including photo and status.