First look inside Coomera Costco opening this week
Eager shoppers will find a huge range of weird and wonderful items for sale when Costco opens. Take a sneak peek at what’s inside and when it opens.
Gold Coast
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Shoppers will find 93 inch teddies, 4.5kg bars of Toblerone, coffins and a $99,999 diamond ring among a large range of products for sale when the new Costco outlet in Coomera opens its doors.
But the most popular items among bargain-hunters are expected to be large packets of toilet paper which retail for $42.99.
The Bulletin was taken on an exclusive tour of the 14,346 sqm facility on Tuesday ahead of its eagerly-anticipated opening at 8am on Thursday.
Costco Australia & New Zealand Managing Director Patrick Noone said the Gold Coast store, which will be the retailer’s third in Queensland, was expected to be one of the busiest in Australia.
“We’ve been looking at this site for about five years I think,” Mr Noone said.
“The growth in the Gold Coast is fantastic so it just made a lot of sense to be in this particular area.”
To shop at Costco, people must first take out a $65 membership. Mr Noone said there had been a huge surge in locals signing up in recent days.
“The first couple of days we had 10 or 20 people a day signing up. Now we’re up to three or four hundred a day,” he said.
“Eight thousand members I think we’ve signed up as of today. I would expect that to climb to ten or 15 (thousand) by the end of the week.”
Tradesmen have been working through the night this week to put final touches to the store’s car park ahead of its opening, when large crowds are expected.
“We know we’re going to be busy the first week or two. We’re looking forward to it,” Mr Noone said.
“I think the traffic will be ok around the outside of Westfield. It’s already very busy out there that freeway (the M1) as it is. We’ll take people off that freeway for an hour or two and they can park here and come in and shop.
“... The (opening of) other two warehouses in Brisbane we had people camp out overnight. I don’t encourage it, but our members are excited.
“Everyone’s very excited about us opening here at Coomera.”
The Coomera store includes a bakery, fresh meat counter, tyre centre, optical centre, hearing aid centre and food court.
In a first for Australia, it also includes a counter serving up freshly made sushi.
Its service station opened a number of weeks ago.
Among items on the shelves is a 60,000-piece jigsaw puzzle which costs $999.99.
Reckoned to be the world’s largest such puzzle available for purchase, it covers an area of 10m x 3m when complete.
“Everything’s bigger at Costco,” Mr Noone said.
Other large items include 100 inch TVs and bulk food products including 7.5kg tubs of gravy powder, giant toblerones and ‘emergency food supply’ tubs with a five-year shelf life that can provide 100 serves.
However Mr Noone said humble toilet paper was the store’s most popular item.
“We’ve just increased our toilet paper production again by half,” he said. “We just can’t keep up.”
About 300 people will be employed at the Coomera store, which will be the 854th Costco to open worldwide and comes after a $66m investment by the company.
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