The Major Bakery Change Costco Is Planning In 2026

Costco's bakery is home to some of the best store-bought cakes around. Yet if you want to order a custom Costco cake for a special occasion, you have to go into your local warehouse in person and fill out a paper form by hand. That is all changing this year. During the December 11, 2025 Costco Q1 2026 earnings call, Costco CEO Ron Vachris outlined plans for one of the most exciting changes coming to Costco in 2026: the ability to order custom cakes through the Costco app.

The existing process for ordering a custom cake at Costco requires members to visit a warehouse, fill out a form, and drop it in a box in the bakery. They would then have to come back on the date of their choice to pick up their cake. However, there wasn't any clear or good system in place that made it easy for customers to follow up on their order, or even confirm that the bakery had received it and that it was going to be ready on the correct day.

During the call, Vachris confirmed that members found the existing process to be "a little bit clunky" and that it'd be "moving to a digital state." In fact, one of the biggest things Costco shoppers say they want to change about the bakery is the ability to order cakes online. Busy members don't want to have to go all the way to the warehouse just to place a custom cake order, especially if they are ordering it for a special occasion or party. Fortunately, that won't be the case for much longer.

Costco bakery's new system should make it less suspenseful to order a custom cake. Your only option for ordering a Costco sheet cake use to be to come into the warehouse and fill out an order form. Then you would just have to cross your fingers and hope your paper form didn't get lost in the shuffle, and you wouldn't know if your order was ready until you showed up at the warehouse on the date of pickup. This new process should provide you with a confirmation of your order and a notification when it is ready. While the execs didn't outline any specifics about what the Costco app cake ordering process will be like, if it's anything like the one used by Walmart's bakery, it will be a snap. 

To order a custom cake from Walmart, customers use a web-based system that allows them to scroll through pictures of cakes, choose the one they want, and then customize options like size, frosting and icing type and color, decorative add-ons, and filling options. Customers can then write in a personalized message for the top of the cake using a text box feature. After they choose a date and time range for pick up and pay, the app gives you an order confirmation. They can then choose to get a notification when the cake is ready for pickup, and are able go back into their account and edit their order up to a certain cut off time. 

Assuming that Costco's new system will be similar to Walmart's, come sometime in 2026, you'll be able place your order through the app or website, get an order confirmation, and get a notification that it's ready for pickup. This will help streamline the whole process and take away the stressful guesswork.