Costco announces new perk for executive members — but not everyone is happy about it

Executive members have complained about a lack of staff during early hours, which means they have to wait longer.

PUBLISHED OCT 31, 2025

Costco shoppers line up at the membership counter. (Cover Image Source: Getty Images| Photo by Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda)

Costco stands out among retail giants for its unique revenue model that relies largely on membership fees instead of product pricing. Among the membership schemes that Costco offers, the Gold Star membership is basic, while the more expensive one is called the Executive membership. The company keeps doing everything it can to get new members and to make existing members upgrade to the latter.

Image Source: Getty Images | Photo By Anthony Devlin

Shoppers get several perks as executive members, including a 2% cash back on most purchases and a 10% off on same-day-delivery grocery orders worth $150 or more. However, Costco has to make sure that the Executive members keep renewing their membership each year, which costs $130. That is not a small amount of money, and for that reason, the business is offering a new benefit to the top-tier members. Now, they can access the store in the early hours of the day.

While some have hailed it as a good decision, since the members will be able to shop in a relatively empty store and beat the rush, it has also faced criticism from both the customers and the employees. According to a report in TheStreet, Costco Executive members in Central New Jersey noticed that there aren’t as many registers open in the morning as there would be during the store’s normal operating hours.

These shoppers only found one to three registers open, while during normal business hours, at least twice that number would be active. This negates the point of early access, as customers will have to wait in longer queues to pay for their products, thanks to the lack of employees at that hour. “What’s the point of being able to shop early if I have to wait in a longer line?” a shopper named Barbara K asked.

A customer moves through the checkout lane with his groceries at a Costco | Getty Images | Robert Nickelsberg)

But it’s not just the customers complaining about this new development. Certain Costco employees aren’t thrilled about this either, as it means that they’ll have to come in to work while it's still dark out. Some of them took to Reddit to make their dissatisfaction known. “Great, does that mean they will force the a.m. merchants to come in at 3 a.m. every day? Because we barely make open as is, and that's too damn early!” one user wrote.

“It’s going to suck having to tell regular members that they’re not allowed in the store yet. I can already hear the complaints,” quipped another. “The funny thing is, a year ago we were told we couldn't come in at 3 (early) anymore because they wanted us to have a work-life balance. So which is it?” one more employee commented.