One sunny Friday, Jeff Airman strolled into the Lake Stevens Costco with a canvas tote bag, a backward ball cap and the open-faced innocence of a guy who’s definitely not here to do something weird.

He made his way to the food court and ordered the warehouse chain’s famed $1.50 hot dog and soda combo. The 46-year-old grabbed a seat in the shadow of the tire center, unzipped his tote, and began remodeling a naked frankfurter into a form of self-expression.

Out came a plastic container of bacon jam, and another of dehydrated dill pickle chips (bought, handily, at Costco). Airman unrolled a tube of cellophane containing cream cheese that he had personally infused with Flamin’ Hot Cool Ranch Doritos. By now, his project—and his table littered with condiments—attracted sidelong glances from people wheeling their carts toward the exit.

With a compostable food court knife, he carefully spread the bacon jam, nestled the cream cheese straw next to the quarter-pound beef frank, and piled the dill pickle chips on top. He excused himself to add the final touch—a squiggle of mustard from a pump at the condiment station, the food court’s sole source of hot dog adornment for most of us regular suckers.

Airman’s alter ego as a Kirkland-brand Banksy was born when Costco stores removed the hand-cranked dispensers full of diced onions as a pandemic precaution. Like every small move Costco makes, this prompted robust online discussion. The despair amused Airman, a former brewer who now manages a restaurant on Camano Island. “You can just bring onions. It’s so easy.”

Then, a realization. “Well, shoot. If I’m bringing onions, I could probably bring more than onions.”

Since November 2022, he’s created more than a dozen custom Costco hot dogs here on the plastic picnic benches of his local store. He transported chili (beanless) in a thermos for a chili dog, fashioned a tubesteak homage to a McDonald’s Big Mac, and toted in toppings like candied jalapeno, almond butter, bacon, furikake, kimchi—even samples of Beecher’s mac and cheese procured from a weekend demo over by the freezer aisle. When Costco brought back the diced onions, Airman incorporated those, too. He’s been known to doctor pizza slices and even frozen drinks from the food court. No, he hasn’t tried the TikTok thing where you put a hot dog inside a chicken bake.

Before he took a bite, the all-important final step: photos. They’ll show up soon on his Instagram and in a few Facebook groups, delighting the many, many other people who share Airman’s affection for the international warehouse store that was founded in SoDo back in 1983.

If only humans could age as gracefully as Costco. The chain turns 40 on September 15. Instead of crow’s feet and existential angst, the company will enter its fourth decade with the sort of brand identity and fan base you can’t buy with sponsored posts and savvy marketing.

Today, Costco has 861 locations, including 270 international stores from Spain to New Zealand. Costco’s identity long ago transcended its Seattle origins (though the name of its Kirkland house brand nods to the Eastside suburb where it used to have its headquarters). But its stolid, unsexy focus on doing right by customers and employees feels earnestly Washingtonian. And its fan base feels spiritually similar to that of Starbucks, whose headquarters is barely a mile from the original warehouse store.

Costco is an ongoing paradox, selling fewer items, but outperforming larger chains. It pulls off truly bonkers deals, but pays employees exceptionally well. Costco locations are large and impersonal by nature. And yet, they inspire a bond, and a culture, you don’t expect from a big box store.

“$55! Not a drill! Run, don’t walk!” One of the 4,800 members of the Woodinville Costco Update Facebook group recently posted a photo of a Bluey Ultimate Mega Set with these urgent instructions. Another member responded, “I had just started my workout at the gym when I saw this. I immediately left and got there by 11.”

If Costco’s official Facebook page or one of the nationwide fan pages (Costco Favorites, Vegan Costco, My Costco Deals) aren’t enough, groups dedicated to specific stores bristle with queries and hot tips. Superfans (and canny content creators) run entire Instagram and TikTok accounts dedicated to spotting new Costco products or reviewing its endless stock of frozen dinners and packaged snacks.

One San Diego couple got married inside their Costco location (using rings, cake, and flowers sourced from within its walls, obviously) and a 2016 college essay about shopping at Costco earned one high school senior acceptance into five Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford. When was the last time you saw anybody dressed up in a Walmart-themed costume for Halloween?

“It comes from a place of being a big fan,” is how Jeff Airman explains his hot dog project. He works at a restaurant and runs a food podcast called Travel Mouth, but is hardly above the joy of scoring lunch and a soda for $1.50. “It’s an American institution but it’s also a Pacific Northwest institution.”

As Northwest institutions go, Costco favors efficiency over advertising. But all that customer adoration didn’t just happen says Jeff Shulman, the Marion B. Ingersoll professor of marketing at University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He views that hot dog combo as a symbol of consistency. One that, over time, became a tradition—even President Obama sang its praises at an event with Costco cofounder Jim Sinegal. The price hasn’t changed since it was introduced in 1985—that’s very intentional.

But the affection people feel for Costco extends way beyond cheap meals (though the rotisserie chicken deserves its own presidential tribute). “They’re very deliberate about bringing in some unique products and good deals,” says Shulman. Some are staples, like massive packs of toilet paper and frozen cod filets. Others are fleeting surprises—a big bag of Reese’s peanut butter animal crackers, a set of flannel sheets, some paleo lemongrass meatballs—that might not be there next time.

As Shulman puts it, “You might go to Walmart to get what’s on your grocery list. But you go to Costco with an open mind.”

Two ambitious guys named Jim Sinegal and Jeff Brotman had just signed a lease for their new venture—a warehouse store called Costco—when the City of Seattle came calling with potentially devastating news. The partners had found a 100,000-square-foot space on Fourth Avenue South in the SoDo neighborhood; they planned to open within six weeks of signing the lease.

But in the summer of 1983, Seattle announced it would close Fourth Avenue South to rebuild the bridge that crosses the train tracks. The move would cut the new store off from the rest of the city, making it nearly impossible for any potential customers to find their way to Costco’s parking lot. The closure would begin just days before the fledgling warehouse store opened its doors.

Sinegal remembers getting on the phone with someone from the city. “I think I said something intelligent like, You can’t do this.”

Locating their very first Costco on the landing path for Boeing Field proved an unlikely stroke of luck. As Sinegal tells it, the city received a set of lights for the new bridge that could have interfered with air traffic signals. This delayed the project for another 60 days—a move that may have saved Costco from instant failure. On September 15, the company placed an ad in the newspaper announcing they were open for business.

“We expected that it was going to start slowly and it did,” says Sinegal. But by the time Fourth Avenue did close, they were busy enough to appreciate the extra parking on the empty street.

He and Brotman were relatively new acquaintances when they founded the store. According to the new book The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z by David and Susan Schwartz, Costco could have been based in Dallas, Colorado, or even Chicago. Ultimately Sinegal and Brotman chose Seattle (Brotman’s hometown) because it was one of the least-competitive retail markets in the 48 contiguous states. Sinegal relocated from Southern California.

The Schwartzes’ book, out this year in honor of the anniversary, gathers an impressive amount of intel about a company that famously dislikes talking about itself. Among them: Costco sells 50 percent of the world’s cashews and 75 percent of Iceland’s population has a membership. Food courts in other countries reflect local tastes with barbecue chicken pizza, bulgogi bakes or cottage pie. Bakeries in Mexico warehouses have popular machines that crank out mini-doughnuts rolled in cinnamon and sugar.

The store has evolved over 40 years, but not that much. Jeff Brotman passed away in 2017. Jim Sinegal is 87 years old and retired in 2012.

“We get a kick out of it,” says Sinegal of Costco’s prolific fan base. Forty years later, Sinegal still sounds like an avatar of the values that built Costco: “You don’t win everyone’s approval and respect overnight. You have to prove yourself day in and day out.”

Then there's the quote that originated at an Issaquah Chamber of Commerce luncheon, but now circulates across the internet (even on the back of a T-shirt): Costco CEO Craig Jelinek, Jim Sinegal's successor, once complained that Costco lost money on its $1.50 hot dog combo. You know, the one that became an emblem of the company’s commitment to value and fostered millions of dollars of un-purchasable goodwill. Not to mention some impressive customizations in a Lake Stevens food court.

Jelinek recounted Sinegal’s reply: “If you raise [the price of] the effing hot dog, I will kill you.”

This article has been updated to include the origin (425 Business magazine) of Craig Jelinek's internet famous hot dog anecdote.