Costco free samples look harmless – but Jeff Rossen’s investigation reveals what shoppers aren’t being told

Journalist Jeff Rossen says Costco’s free samples are not just a friendly perk for hungry shoppers pushing oversized carts through a warehouse. In his investigation for Rossen Reports, he argues they are part of a carefully designed business machine built around psychology, timing, and a sales model most customers probably never think about.

At first glance, the setup looks simple enough. A worker in a hairnet hands out little bites of chicken, chips, salsa, truffles, or frozen snacks. You taste it, smile politely, and move on.

But Rossen says that is not the full story at all.

According to him, the free sample game is far more strategic than it looks, and the economics behind it are big enough to surprise even regular Costco shoppers. In his words, the money side of this is “huge,” and once he started digging, he says the numbers “blew his mind.”

That is really the theme of the whole report. The samples may feel casual, but the system behind them is anything but.

Jeff Rossen Says Costco Barely Pays for the Samples

One of the first things Rossen focuses on is the money, because he says that is where the story gets much bigger than most shoppers realize.

According to his investigation, Costco itself spends basically no money on the free sample program. Instead, he says, the vendors – the companies that make the food products – pay Costco for the right to set up shop and hand those samples out.

Rossen says Costco charges $35 per station, per store. Based on his research, he says the average Costco has about 10 sample stations running.

From there, he does the math and says Costco pulls in around $210,000 a day just from fees connected to opening those sample stations. And that is before counting any of the products shoppers actually buy after trying them.

That is the kind of detail that changes how you see the sample table. It is not just about giving away a bite of chicken or a tiny paper cup of salsa. It is rented retail space inside one of the busiest warehouse chains in the country.

Rossen goes further, saying the free-sample system is estimated to be tied to as much as $46 billion a year, which he says is about 17% of Costco’s revenue.

That figure is enormous, and even if shoppers never think of it this way, Rossen’s point is clear: “free” samples are part of a very expensive and very profitable sales engine.

The People Handing You the Sample Do Not Actually Work for Costco

Another detail Rossen highlights is who those sample workers really are.

He says the people standing behind the sample carts are not Costco employees. They work for a separate company called CDS, which stands for Club Demonstration Services.

According to Rossen, CDS handles the free-sample operations for Costco and employs 10,000 samplers who are sent out to Costcos across the country and around the world every day.

That matters because many shoppers probably assume the whole operation is being run directly by Costco staff. Rossen says it is not.

It also helps explain why the sample stations seem so polished and standardized. This is not a casual in-store extra. It is a dedicated business operation with its own staffing system, its own economics, and its own performance structure.

Rossen says he even asked one of the workers how many samples a single station gives out in a day. The answer: up to 1,000.

That is a lot of tiny bites moving through one cart.

And once you hear that number, the whole thing feels less like a simple food perk and more like a full-scale marketing pipeline.

Rossen Says the Real Surprise Is That the Samples Actually Work

One of the biggest questions Rossen wanted answered was the one many shoppers probably ask themselves too: do people actually buy this stuff after sampling it?

He says yes, and not just a little.

To make that point, Rossen uses one specific example from a Costco he visited. He says Crazy Cuisine General Tso’s Chicken was being sampled there one week earlier, and he followed up on the numbers.

According to Rossen, it costs the manufacturer around $350 to run one sample station for a day once you add up Costco’s fee, the vendor costs, utensils, and product. Multiply that across Costco’s 600 stores, and he says the company behind that one product likely spent around $210,000 on a sample day.

That sounds like a lot, until Rossen gets to the payoff.

He says on the day a product is sampled, it typically gets a 40% lift in sales. But that is only part of it. Over the next six weeks, he says there is a “halo” effect, with another 15% increase in sales after the sample event.

By the end of that period, Rossen says the profit becomes huge—about 134%. In his example, that means spending roughly $210,000 on sample day and pulling back around half a million dollars six weeks later.

That is the kind of return that makes the free-sample table look a lot less like generosity and a lot more like a carefully measured ad campaign with a frying pan.

Do the Sample Workers Care If You Buy Anything?

This is one of the funniest and most relatable parts of Rossen’s report, because he asks a question many Costco shoppers have probably wondered about at least once.

If you grab a sample, smile, and then walk away with no intention of buying the item, do the people at the cart care?

Rossen says he decided to test this himself.

He grabs a sample, waits about 15 seconds, and then goes right back for another one to see whether the worker recognizes him. According to Rossen, some of the vendors told him they do not even look at faces. He says they told him not to feel bad and not to give a long explanation if he is not buying anything.

He tries it, and the worker offers another sample with no issue.

That leads Rossen to the answer. The workers used to be incentivized, he says, meaning they got extra money if people bought the products. But now, according to what he was told, that incentive structure is gone.

They are hourly workers.

So Rossen says the answer is basically no—they do not really care whether you come back and buy the product or not. Have as many as you want.

But then he makes an important point. Even if the workers do not care, your brain may still process the whole interaction differently.

Jeff Rossen Says the Psychology Is Doing More Work Than People Realize

This is where the report gets especially interesting.

Rossen says smell is your strongest buying sense. If something hot and pleasant is cooking, it can make you hungry, and when you get hungry, you want to buy whatever is producing that smell.

That helps explain why the busiest sample stations are often the hot-food ones. Rossen points to one cart surrounded by people and explains that the smell is part of what is pulling them in.

Then he gets into what he calls “reciprocity guilt.”

According to Rossen, when you get something for free, your brain often processes it like a favor. And once that happens, you feel a subtle urge to return the favor somehow.

In this case, that can mean buying the product.

He says the workers may not care, but your brain does not know that. It still feels like you have been given something, and that creates a soft pressure.

Then there is social proof. Rossen says when shoppers see a crowd gathered around a sample station, many of them think, “They know something I don’t know.” That crowd draws more people, and the bigger crowd then drives even more sales.

He also points to decision fatigue.

Costco is huge. It can be overwhelming. There are endless shelves, giant packages, and too many choices. Rossen says sample stations cut through that fog by narrowing the decision for you. After wandering through the store for an hour, here is a product right in front of you, already chosen, already cooked, already in your mouth.

That is not just convenient. It is persuasive.

Honestly, that may be the sharpest insight in the entire video. The sample does not just sell taste. It sells relief from having to think so much.

Some Samples Win Big, Others Barely Move the Needle

Rossen also says not all sample products perform the same way.

Healthy products, according to the vendors he talked to, do not do as well. He points to oats and almond milk as examples.

What tends to do better? The fun stuff.

Dark chocolate truffles. Chips. Snack foods. Richer, more indulgent items.

Rossen’s point is simple and probably not shocking: shoppers are more drawn to products that feel like treats than products that feel like nutritional homework.

He also backs up the sales effect by talking to a shopper who had just sampled a product and then bought it. She tells him directly that she would not have purchased it without tasting it first.

That moment matters because it puts a real human face on all the numbers. It is one thing to hear about sales lifts and six-week profit curves. It is another to hear a shopper openly say, yes, the sample changed my mind.

That is exactly why Rossen says the strategy works.

The Best Time to Go Is Not Random

Rossen does not stop with the business model and psychology. He also says there are better and worse times to go if you want the strongest sample experience.

According to him, Fridays and Saturdays are prime time, with 10 to 15 stations per store and sometimes as many as 20. That makes sense, since more people are off work and shopping then.

As for the best time of day, Rossen says around lunchtime and just before dinner are the sweet spots.

That timing fits the psychology too. People are hungrier, which makes the scents stronger, the carts busier, and the products more tempting.

In other words, even the timing is part of the strategy.

“Free” Does Not Always Mean It Costs You Nothing

By the end of the report, Jeff Rossen’s main point is hard to miss.

Yes, the samples are free in the narrow sense. You do not hand over money for the bite itself. The worker is not judging you. Costco is not charging you per truffle.

But Rossen says those samples are still part of a system designed to move product and trigger buying behavior.

They create hunger. They trigger reciprocity. They narrow choices. They build crowds. They turn curiosity into purchases. And they make a lot of money for both vendors and Costco.

That does not mean shoppers need to be paranoid every time they accept a mini cup of soup or a bite of chicken. But it does mean the sample station is not just there to be nice.

It is there because it works.

And that is really the hard truth behind Rossen’s investigation: Costco free samples may look harmless, but behind every tiny paper cup is a very smart sales strategy that knows exactly what it is doing.