Costco Food Court — Restaurant in Winnipeg

Costco's food court is quite honestly very addictive. It's quick, it's efficient, the food tastes great, and best of all, it's very cheap (and who can say no to free refills on drinks!). The more recent addition of self-service machines in late 2019 at this particular one was huge in that it virtually eliminated the problem of long lineups just to order. Previously you would line up, then get your own tray, then you'd call your order out, then you'd shuffle over to the cashiers and they would tally everything up. Sometimes, not too often but once in a while, your order wasn't ready when you found yourself at the cashier and you'd have to awkwardly wait at the end with an empty tray while the workers kept at it on your order, which I'm sure is not just annoying to you, but also to the cashiers. Nowadays, it's just a matter of stepping aside from the machines and waiting for your order number to be called kind of like McDonald's, which is a much better system for the workers to take as much time as they need to get it right, which in turn is a better system for orderers.

Finding available seating can become quite challenging if not impossible at times, particularly during peak shopping windows like weekends, but eventually someone will either wave you over if they're about to wrap up or to share a table if you're solo or with just one other person. I myself prefer to start off with a food court visit and then go shopping after that to make things a little easier. The amount of seats at Regent is about comparable to the amount at the St. James location. But rest assured that any wait you do encounter will be well worth it.

January 2024 edit: There have been several significant quality of life regressions that I must take a couple of stars away for. Before I'd consider restoring them, I'd really like to see the following happen: Ban "reserving" seats during peak periods where seating is at or above capacity. Several McDonald's franchisees have an anti-loitering sign stating that you have a 30 minute time limit while actively dining. The key words there being "actively dining". It gets infuriating quickly to see selfish members sitting with not even so much as a water bottle from the vending machine while I'm just standing around, looking lost, and scanning to see if someone will wave me over to either signal they're packing up their garbage and leaving soon, or to share unused table space. In the time some members spend hogging up a table, I could've already sat down, ate, and have binned my garbage before they even start to eat. It's fine if there's lots of empty tables around, but when there's exactly zero with families stuck waiting by the condiments, sit down, eat, then get out of there. The conversion of a few of the tables to standing tables hasn't really helped matters to be honest. Bring back trays - it becomes a major inconvenience even with just a two or three item order to bring it over to a table if you're not planning on walking out of the warehouse to-go. And if you're stuck waiting for a table, chances are good you're gonna get grease on yourself. A workaround you could use would be to grab an empty box somewhere from the front which is what I've been doing lately. Paint lines on the floor to establish an orderly cart parking area. Go search online for an image of what Costco's Japanese food courts look like and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. And even then, they don't necessarily NEED the lines over there, they just do it anyway because they think about their fellow everyman. Put up a screen listing outstanding orders and orders ready to be picked up. Oftentimes orderers will completely disappear, nowhere to be seen, as workers repeatedly call their order number out to no response. This would also be very beneficial for allowing the hearing impaired to know when their...

Food court speed and efficiency has taken a nose dive. Specifically last couple times we’ve ordered pizza, and been left standing for almost 30 minutes because it’s not the person standing by the register calling for pizza orders anymore, it’s by the pizza ovens, but no sign to specify this. It’s a loud environment and order numbers should not be getting called from multiple areas, an order screen needs to be installed. I don’t know when this changed but it’s unnecessary.

Also the hanging clothing racks in the clothing area have taken up so much space, and there’s item return carts just spread out around an already cramped area, topped with folding tables left in aisles, making it nearly impossible to navigate a cart...

I asked an employee from produce where to find a product and he walked me quite a ways to help me find it and was really friendly. I’m rating this location 3 stars despite this, because of the produce here. I’ve only bought items from this store 3 times. First time the bunch of bananas we got stayed yellowish green for 3 weeks and never got soft and only got harder. Had to throw them. Then this last time we went we tried again and got bananas that were yellowed and they were almost completely covered in black spots within 3 days… lol very abnormal? The cucumbers were bad as...