Costco opens two new warehouses, pushing U.S. total past 640

Costco opened new warehouses in Syracuse, Utah, and Pensacola, Florida, this week, lifting its U.S. footprint past 640 locations and starting the usual launch scramble on the sales floor and in the back room. For warehouse workers, that kind of growth is not just a ribbon-cutting. It means hiring spikes, packed training calendars, and a short window to get new teams ready to move freight, serve members and protect Costco standards.

The Syracuse warehouse opened on June 24, and Pensacola followed on June 25. Pensacola will be Costco’s 35th location in Florida, while Syracuse will be its 16th in Utah. In Syracuse, work on the site began in June 2025, a long runway that now turns into the harder part: staffing the building, putting experienced employees in place and smoothing out the first weeks of operation.

Costco’s own New Locations page shows those two openings are part of a wider buildout. The company lists additional 2026 warehouses in S Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Albany, New York, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, Otsego, Minnesota and Mansfield, Texas. That pipeline matters inside the building because every new warehouse pulls from the same bench of experienced labor. Front-end assistants, stockers, forklift operators, meat and bakery employees, optical staff and warehouse supervisors all have to ramp up together, and district teams often get pulled into launch mode to keep the opening on schedule.

The scale of the expansion is visible in Costco’s operating numbers. As of May 10, the company said it had 931 warehouses worldwide, including 639 in the United States and Puerto Rico, up from 914 worldwide and 629 in the United States and Puerto Rico at fiscal year-end 2025. Net sales for the first 36 weeks of fiscal 2026 rose 9.6 percent to $203.37 billion, showing that the chain is adding stores while still producing strong sales. Costco had already told investors in September 2025 that it planned to open 35 new warehouses in fiscal 2026, including five relocations, after opening 24 net-new warehouse stores in fiscal 2025 and 27 the year before.

For workers, the pace points to more than growth headlines. A warehouse opening means more transfers, more chances for promotions and more pressure on seasoned employees who are asked to train the next wave while keeping shelves full and members moving. When Costco opens this many stores this fast, the story is not just where the company is going. It is how much of the workforce gets reshuffled to get there.