Unlike Costco's Food Court, You May Not Need A Membership To Eat At This Rival Store

Costco members are constantly bragging about how wonderful its food court is, but you have to wonder sometimes if they're just trying to justify paying that $65 Gold Star membership fee. After all, if it's all about hot dogs, Ikea's Swedish Bistro sells them cheaper. What's more, while Sam's Club pizza may be slightly pricier per square inch, one of the many things Sam's Club does better than Costco is allow you to eat at the food court without being a member.

Costco's policy has long been that its amenities — food court included — are only reserved for members, although in years past, people would sometimes get around that by finding a location where the employees weren't too vigilant about asking to see membership cards. A few years ago, however, the chain doubled down on its commitment to kicking out non-members by installing scanners that read your card before allowing you to order and pay, thus eliminating human lenience. However, there may still be an open-door policy at the Sam's Club Café (as the store terms its food court). In fact, it's not unknown for a whole group of non-members to congregate at a Café and split a pizza.

In order to see the Sam's Club café menu, you need to first be in a store and then open the Sam's Club app. Non-members can download the app, but not all features are available to them, and this may include ordering options. Some customers have also said that register ordering is no longer available in their stores. According to one Redditor commenting on a thread from July 2025, "The café is becoming scan and go. The only way you'll be able to use it is to become a member." Even at clubs where register ordering is still available in the cafe, other Redditors mentioned having to show their membership cards twice: Once to enter the store, and then again when they placed a café order.

Sam's Club does not address any policy changes on its website, and a Facebook thread from March 2026 still touts the ability of non-members to eat there. (Some commenters lament that this makes for extra-long lines.) This seems to be a more or less grey area, though, as one person, who frequents the Sam's in Charleston, West Virginia, spoke of a compromise that store seems to have adopted. "At our club, they have a membership card taped beside the register in the food café and they just scan the membership card that's on the counter for everyone," they wrote. Another shopper, however, noted that their store recently started scanning and explained, " ... since you no longer need a card to get in the club they changed that. They said they noticed a lot more people coming in just to buy the food. They said they only want their customers to get that benefit."