Costco is getting into the wine and beer business in Pennsylvania
Costco, one of the nation’s largest wine sellers, is moving to acquire liquor licenses for stores including King of Prussia and Warminster. It wants to sell wine, beer, and ready-to-drink cocktails.
How about adding a bottle of pinot noir to that 30-roll brick of toilet paper in your shopping cart at Costco? Or buying a Surfside to enjoy in the seating area with your $1.50 hot dog?
Costco is moving on multiple fronts to bring sales of wine, beer, and canned cocktails to stores in Pennsylvania.
The warehouse club — which sold more than $3 billion of wine nationwide in 2024 — recently won approval to transfer a liquor license from the former Pizzeria Uno in Doylestown Township to its store at Jacksonville and Street Roads in Warminster, Bucks County. It is also pursuing alcohol sales at its stores in Cranberry Township, Butler County, and King of Prussia, Montgomery County.
At a March 5 hearing before the Warminster Township Board of Supervisors, Costco attorney Gregory Szallar of Flaherty & O’Hara said the store would not operate a bar, sell draft beer or mixed drinks, offer happy hour, or permit outdoor drinking. Most sales, he said, would be bottles and canned products to go, as is now common at supermarkets with restaurant liquor licenses.
Any on-premises consumption would be limited to the seating area, as required under state law. Szallar said that Costco would scan customers’ identification, and that trained employees and a licensed manager would oversee sales.
Warminster approved the license transfer with conditions: no alcohol sales through self-checkout and sales limited to three registers.
Szallar, who did not specify when alcohol sales could start in Warminster, did not return a message seeking comment from The Inquirer. Costco representatives have not returned messages left over the last two weeks.
It is not known if Costco plans to work with the state to carry its own Kirkland Signature brand wine, which is not offered for sale by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.
The Warminster vote adds to Costco’s broader Pennsylvania push. In Cranberry, north of Pittsburgh, the company is furthest along, as it secured a license on March 9; at the hearing, Szallar said alcohol sales there were expected to begin within about six months.
Costco is also seeking to sell wine, beer, and canned cocktails at its store at Allendale Road and Wills Boulevard in King of Prussia through the liquor license formerly tied to the shuttered Legal Sea Foods at King of Prussia Mall. Because that transfer remained within Upper Merion Township, it did not require the same municipal approval process as the Warminster and Cranberry transactions. State records list the King of Prussia transfer as pending.
Retailers must work within the framework of Pennsylvania’s restrictive liquor laws. Under Act 39, which became effective in 2016, supermarkets must hold a qualifying restaurant-style liquor license, maintain a food-service area of at least 400 square feet with seating for at least 30 people, and obtain a wine expanded permit. That permit allows takeout sales of up to three liters per transaction, typically four bottles of wine.
These so-called R licenses, traded on the open market, can carry a steep price tag. A liquor license in Warminster, Bucks County, has a fair market value of about $350,000 to $385,000, while one in Upper Merion can sell for $380,000 to $410,000, said Edward B. McHugh, a liquor-law attorney with Goldstein & McHugh who was not involved in the transactions.