Skechers Opened a Restaurant Inside One of Its Stores, and It Looks Just Like Costco

In mid-May, one popular post on the r/Costco subreddit included several photos of a restaurant food court that looked a lot like Costco but wasn’t in the popular warehouse store. “[I] was looking at Yelp for something new to try and saw a picture of this menu,” the Redditor wrote. “Had to try it out myself. Have you ever seen a company ape Costco’s style so directly?” 

That very obvious Costco homage had a limited menu of reasonably priced faves, including $2.50 Nathan’s hot dogs, $2.50 slices of cheese pizza, and a $5 double cheeseburger. But the most surprising part of the whole situation is that the restaurant, called The Food Spot, is attached to a Skechers store in Gardena, California. “I have no idea why they went bizarro Costco with it, but it’s pretty popular,” the Redditor wrote, adding that the Food Spot’s fries were “pretty great.” 

According to KTLA, the Food Spot opened at the Gardena Skechers store at the beginning of May but began to pick up more attention in recent weeks thanks to recent coverage on Eater and SFGate, as well as a plethora of social media posts. Its arrival was facilitated by stealing 900 square feet of the retailer’s floor space to create a commercial kitchen. The only food offerings that aren’t made-to-order on-site are those “pretty great” French fries, which are frozen. 

Although combining Skechers casual sneakers with Nashville hot chicken sandwiches might seem strange, Skechers co-founder Michael Greenberg told KTLA that he’d “always thought” having a concession stand at that particular store would be a cool idea. (The Gardena location was the Manhattan Beach-headquartered chain’s second brick-and-mortar store.) 

"I think it just took everybody by surprise," Greenberg told the outlet. "I think in the beginning, there were people that were scratching their head saying, 'What is Michael doing?' And I could understand, you know, but this was my vision."

His vision has proven to be a good one; the Food Spot serves around 2,000 customers every week. "[T]he most important thing to me was the quality of food," Greenberg added. "Because I relate the quality of the food, it's got to be as good as the product that we sell, whether you wear our product, or you ingest and chew our product. So it was, 'Well, can we do it right? Can I have the best fried chicken sandwich? Can I have the best double cheese Smashburger? Will people drive here for the food and the experience?'"

The answers seem to be "Yes, and yes." As of this writing, The Food Spot has an average rating of 4.3 on Google, with one reviewer gushing, "I've been here four times in four days," while another claimed that the cheeseburger "tasted better than In N Out, and [was] a much better value than Shake Shack." 

The Skechers Food Spot is located at 19000 S. Vermont Avenue in Gardena, and it is open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m., seven days a week. And, for the sake of comparison, the closest Costco is open from 9 a.m. until 8:30 p.m., just in case you want to do a head-to-head comparison.