Warehouse Stores
Written on Jun 11, 2026
I'm more familiar with warehouse stores than I want to be. My first experience with warehouse club stores soured me on all warehouse stores early in my adult life.
I lived in small cities until I joined the military at the age of 17. Those cities didn't have any warehouse stores and they had few franchise stores.
Warehouse Stores in the United States
My first experience was a Gemco somewhere near the base I was stationed at in San Diego, California. Two of us went there, and as we were trying to enter the store, the security guard asked to see our membership cards.
It took a few minutes of explanations to get us to understand what we were dealing with. Luckily, membership cards were only a dollar, and we could get them somewhere near the front of the store.
That was the first and last time I paid for a membership card in the United States. Other warehouse club stores have popped up since then, including Sam's Club, but I've never been a member. My wife, Josie, was a member of that particular store for several years.
Today's Costco is the third-largest retailer in America, after Walmart and Amazon. It's a warehouse club that neither of us has ever been a member of. When my family lived in Phoenix, we did most of our grocery shopping at the nearby Air Force base.
We've been inside a few Costco stores, but we were always accompanying a friend or relative. I remember my father talking about going to "Price Club" when I was young, which was at least an hour's trip from his home to somewhere in metro Phoenix. It's now a Costco.
Josie and I've been to non-membership warehouse stores as well, but I only remember "Mega Foods" and "WinCo Foods".
Warehouse Stores in the Philippines
As far as I know, S&R Membership Shopping is the only warehouse club store in the Philippines. According to the Wikipedia page for it, there are 28 branches. The closest branch to us is in Dau in the Pampanga province (about an hour away).
Josie and I have been to the one in San Fernando, Pampanga, a couple of times because it was on the way back from Manila. We so rarely go to either store that we have to renew our membership cards each time we go.
There are stores in the Philippines that are kind of like the warehouse club stores, but they're not membership stores. Puregold, the big store at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, is one of them.
Coincidentally, Puregold became the sole owner of S&R Membership Shopping in 2012. That means there will probably never be anything more than an S&R pizza place at the freeport zone.
Filipino businesses tend to copy each other. When one does well, like any one of the various SM and Ayala malls, it stands out. If S&R continues to pick up steam, other warehouse club stores are bound to pop up eventually.
Image by Nhick Ramiro Pacis from Pixabay