But first, some stalling — I mean background. You don’t want to leap immediately into the shock, horror and disturbance, do you?
No. You want some perhaps-relevant background material about Costco first.
The Costco Fairy Tale
The whole thing started as a dream in young Jim Sinegal’s mind in Seattle in the early 1980s. Jim started as a supermarket bagger in a little mom and pop grocery store on Main Street. Then one day, the daughter of the mom and pop grocery store owners, whose name was Tania, came in. Jim fell in love.
He went to the mom and pop.
“May I ask your daughter Tania out for a date,” he asked.
Mom frowned. Pop frowned.
“Sorry, we would never let Tania date a grocery bagger,” they said. “We’re aiming a little higher, son. It’s a no.”
Jim was devastated.
That’s when he made the decision — out of anger and a thirst for revenge.
“I will put every mom and pop grocery store in the world out of business,” he said to himself. “One day, there won’t even be a shop on Main Street, because I will have put them ALL out of business.”
Jim knew how to make his dream come true.
“I’ll just open an enormous store on the outskirts of town, where space is cheaper and there’s room for thousands of parking spots. I’ll sell at wholesale prices and I’ll crush Mom and Pop right out of their small-minded misery!”
The only problem, Jim was a grocery bagger and didn’t have enough money to make his dream come true. Until he met Jeff Brotman. Jeff was a lawyer and he had money. And he also hated Main Street.
“One day, some bullies in the neighborhood pushed me down and I busted my lip,” he said. “That was on Main Street. I made up my mind that one day I would destroy Main Street! Because Main Street sucks!”
“I agree!” said Jim. And they made the deal to start Costco.
Together they opened the first Costco warehouse in Seattle in 1983. Here’s a photo of their first Costco store.
Yes, it’s true, the chain has come a long way since that first day in Jeff’s garage.
But What About Kirkland? How did that get started?
Jim and Jeff were tired of sharing their profits with their suppliers.
“We are two super greedy guys,” said Jeff. “And also, we both had an amateur level interest in the occult. So that was the perfect combination that lead to starting our own proprietary Kirkland Brand.”
Instead of paying farmers and manufacturers and shippers and laborers to produce their products, Jim and Jeff summoned a demon during a dark magic ritual.
The demon’s name, you guessed it, was Kirk.
“We really didn’t think it was going to work,” explained Jim. “We had this dusty old book of spells. We got some witchy ingredients. We lit a candle. And then we started chanting, and that’s when this demon appeared. We almost shit our pants.”
The demon didn’t speak. He just handed the two entrepreneurs a rotisserie chicken.
“We were kind of embarrassed,” recalls Jim. “We tried to tell him that we were a big box store, not a chicken restaurant. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept pointing at the chicken and moving his mouth, and finally we understood what he wanted us to do.”
Taste the chicken. That’s what the demon wanted Jim and Jeff to do. So they opened up the plastic container and took a bite.
“Oh my gosh,” remembers Jim. “Neither of us had ever tasted anything like it.”
The two immediately signed an agreement with the demon, giving him possession of both of their souls, in return for a promise to provide these amazing rotisserie chickens for the store.
When people tasted the demonic chicken, that was it. Costco exploded. People went crazy.
“Are there any more Kirkland Products?” they wanted to know.
So Kirk started conjuring up more Kirkland products for the pair, as their business grew and grew.
Growing Pains
Because they had now wiped out all the mom and pop shops on Main Street, and because they were in business with a demon, Jeff suggested that they better come up with a PR strategy.
“We decided to be really great employers, and to pay our people well, with benefits and flexible hours,” said Jeff. “So everybody would love us even though we had almost single-handedly destroyed American life.”
“Oh, and don’t forget the free samples,” chimed in Jim.
Soon, they were big enough to acquire their competitor, Price Club. But right around the same time that that deal went through, Kirk sold Jim and Jeff’s souls to a consortium of seven other demon “investors.”
“We had no idea a soul could be acquired and sold just like a corporate entity,” said Jeff. “I mean, we knew Kirk. We trusted him. Now we had to get to know these seven other demons.”
The seven other demons that now produce Kirkland products are:
Orobus is a powerful Great Prince of Hell, he has answers for questions of the past, present and to come. He takes care of paper products for the Kirkland line.
Bael is the first king of Hell with three heads: a toad, a man, and a cat. He oversees the bottled water division.
Paimon (also Paimonia, Paymon) is more obedient to Lucifer than other kings, and has two hundred legions of demons under his rule. He’s responsible for mixing the nuts.
Ronové (also Ronove, Roneve, Ronwe) is a Marquis and Great Earl of Hell. He is depicted as a monster holding a staff. He is also a taker of old souls; often coming to earth to harvest souls of vulnerable humans and weak or infirm animals. His main department is peanut butter pretzels.
Marchosias is a wolf with a man’s form as well as a griffin’s wings and a serpent’s tail, that changes shape into a man. His specialty product is fish oil.
Andras is a Grand Marquis of Hell, appearing with a winged angel’s body and the head of an owl or raven, riding upon a strong black wolf and wielding a sharp and bright sword. He is also responsible for sowing discord and for slicing peaches.
Agares rules the eastern zone of Hell, and being served by 31 legions of demons. He finds pleasure in teaching immoral expressions and manages the production of cashew clusters.
And that’s the Kirkland team.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, after Jim became a successful Big Box store owner, he did call up Tania, the daughter of the Mom and Pop who owned the Mom and Pop grocery store, to ask her out for a date.
He was horrified to learn that she had died years earlier. Her parents, after having lost their Mom and Pop store, couldn’t afford the operation that might have saved her.
He lived the rest of his life as a bachelor and constructed a statue in Tania’s name in the employee lounge of every Costco store in the US and Canada.
So next time you’re in Costco, think about all these things — the incredible story of tragedy and triumph behind one of America’s great institutions. And don’t forget — Kirkland might be a consortium of demons…
…but the chicken is still to die for!
Written By: Christine Stevens
This article was originally published on Medium.