I want to live like Costco people
tastecooking.com
tastecooking.com
Good example of how people can build identities through their brand choices and purchasing habits.
It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant if another company releases a better product. Yet the crossover between brands, identities, and lifestyles is deeply held by many people.
I know some will try to turn this into a criticism of Americans, but in my travels and international business experience I wouldn’t even rank Americans in the top 10 for integrating brands and identity. In some countries I had to make a conscious effort to try to wear clothes from acceptable brands and swap my functional laptop bag for something more stylish to avoid letting my purchasing habits become a point of judgment from others. It’s actually refreshing to come back to America where as long as you’ve made some effort to look more or less appropriate for the occasion few people care about the brand of your clothes, laptop bag, or car. Some people are proud of their Audi or designer bag, but I rarely run into situations where I’d be judged for arriving in a sensible Subaru instead of a Mercedes.
Unfortunately, they have people like that everywhere.
South Korea is one example that I have intimate knowledge of where one's consumer habits (the clothes one wears, the car one drives, the logo on one's handbag) is the ultimate signal of status.
You're automatically pre-judged by complete strangers without having to say a single word.
There are always exceptions to the rule, but it is in fact an unspoken rule over there.
I'm saying that in the case of South Korea, that extrapolation is very much accurate.
I don't advertise for free.
Nike logo? Polo logo?
Not a chance.
The things where you notice the money are private planes and nice houses/apartments (and multiples thereof) and art. And perhaps caring even less what people think of them.
For those of us who grew up in the era of the "Are you a Mac or a PC" [1], many Americans are intimately familiar with the concept of brand identity.
(Reflecting on it, I don't think I ever knew anyone who was "loyal" to Microsoft, or, dare I say, even particularly liked them as a company. At least certainly not the way people like Apple.)
In that sense, I feel as though Apple is the exception that proves the rule. There are really (almost) no other brands in Americans' everyday lives that elicit such a strong brand identity.
But there were people who were vocally non-Mac, dismissing it as “great for students and graphic designers”, but not a computer for real work.
(That was me in the 90’s. Of course eventually I began working on a Mac professionally.)
I agree. You can go into Costco and see a store full of individuals who happen to be shopping at Costco that day, or you can go to Costco and see the same people as slaves to an imagined Costco lifestyle that you can then write about for 800 words. It says more about the author than the shoppers. This article is the worst kind of lifestyle trend engineering.
I enjoyed reading about the writer realizing he's turning into his father and taking photos of things his dad used to buy to share with his mom. He spots people that may be falling in love. Clumsy people apologizing to nobody. He counts eight different languages.
I thought it was charming and a little nostalgic.
Unfortunately I think America is starting to lose this way a bit, with the influx of newer premium brands and the fracturing of American consumers into endless lifestyle personas. But there's still some truth left in it.
To say that "the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest" by using Coke as an example is a significant oversimplification and is cherry picking examples to prove a point. The richest consumers buy plenty of consumer goods that the poorest cannot even dream of buying or even renting.
If there was a truffle-infused Coke with edible 24k gold flakes that cost 10x as much (and actually tasted good) you can be sure pretty much only the richest consumers would be drinking it, and that everyone who couldn't afford it would be doing everything in their power to keep up with the Joneses.
What percentage of "the poorest" own their own home or go on international trips more than once a year let alone owning multiple homes, luxury cars, and private jets?
The implication is the lack of a rigorous class hierarchy in America. Not that the rich don't live different lifestyles or consume more. But that niche luxury products were considered effete and un-American.
(Andy Warhol was almost certainly also being ironic - that the richest people in America publicly shared the same trashy taste as average Americans).
The closest analogue today might be an iPhone. Rich or poor, if you want the "best" phone you have an iPhone. Sure, there are gaudier and more expensive phones out there. But you're essentially using the same product as the richest Americans.
What about cars or houses?
Being rich is better than being poor. The Warhol quote has nothing to do with that fact.
As someone who started out very poor, and is now ~ 30x above that. I strongly subscribe to the idea that happiness from income is very logarithmic. The first 2-3x income was life changing. I'm talking going from eating pasta, rice and beans for most meals to fresh fruit and veg, lean cuts of meat. From renting a room in a noisy apartment with 4 other people to having my own place that was both safe and quiet. My reading list was suddenly more constrained by time instead of price or library backlog.
I suppose it's down to my starting position, a content disposition and a boring lack of imagination, but my expenses have now ~ 5x'd what they were when I was on the strugglebus, but still very modest, and I honestly can't identify any spending that would make my life better or make me happier long term.
This is very rarely the case. For tailored or custom clothing, sure, but that doesn’t end up being the most expensive. Silly designer brands with lower quality do.
[Honda Fireblade: throttle open and in the red, eyes closed and smiling.]
/s
In other words, it's still perceived as a sign of status.
the people who have the real money are flying in private jets.
Doesn't the fact that the original quote literally acknowledges "bums on the corner" imply that he wasn't referring to housing at all?
Where I live pretty much all new houses are being built with granite counter tops and hardwood floors. Whether that's a good thing is a whole other topic ...
Claims presented without evidence. My slightly modified Subaru Wagon from '05 "out-accelerated" base Teslas - dead even in 1st gear, started pulling once the shift to 2nd happened. (Most) EVs cannot shift gears to get torque multiplication, so they start fast, but fall off as speeds get higher. My Kia gas car will outrun all but the model 3 performance - which the average person is NOT driving. Neither of those cars are "niche".
Slightly modified is doing some heavy lifting there. No 2005 Subaru wagon in stock config is anywhere close to beating a Model 3.
> (Most) EVs cannot shift gears to get torque multiplication, so they start fast, but fall off as speeds get higher.
Pretty much irrelevant, because they’re still blisteringly fast up to 60 which is where most of the acceleration happens in day to day. Nobody really cares about 60-80 or 60-100.
> My Kia gas car will outrun all but the model 3 performance - which the average person is NOT driving.
What Kia is that? Even the stinger GT (which is definitely a niche car) is slower than a regular dual motor model 3.
'19 Stinger GT AWD. jb4 (piggyback) - dual model 3 couldn't pass me on track (he had more experience than I did) - he cornered a little better due to low center-of-mass, I pulled on him in the straights. Repeatedly.
I'd believe it. I wouldn't call adding 20%+ horsepower to a car 'slightly' modifying it though. The original point still stands that your niche car (a performance version of the Subaru Legacy, with a tune on top of it) still barely manages to go toe-to-toe with a stock Model 3. If you left it stock, it would definitely be slower.
> '19 Stinger GT AWD. jb4 (piggyback) - dual model 3 couldn't pass me on track (he had more experience than I did) - he cornered a little better due to low center-of-mass, I pulled on him in the straights. Repeatedly.
So, you're proving my point? Stinger GT is already a niche car. You then threw a tune on it, which is even more niche. Compare it to a performance model 3 if you want to be fair in that case. I guarantee there's more performance model 3 owners than there are Stinger GT owners.
It’s not particularly noteworthy that the road version a vehicle used by Subaru’s WRC team can keep up with a Tesla if you modify the ECU and add more boost.
We bought it mostly because we wanted an EV for power backup for the house. We get ice storms in the winter and it can knock out power for days, and we need to be able to keep almost 1,000 gallons of aquariums running during them. The F150 extended range has that in spades and was cheaper than the equivalent power wall system.
It's basically a whole house backup generator that we can happen to drive around.
It's as capable, if not more so, than your standard F150 at truck duties in everything except towing. And it's a bit of a mixed bag there, it can tow way more than a standard f150, but it cuts the range to 1/3 so you have to charge pretty often. Still, 100 miles towing 10,000 pounds is nothing to sneeze at.
As for the generator aspect, with its 135 kWh battery pack, I can power the aquariums for weeks and weeks.
The F-150 extended range is 3.8 as you state, but then the Tesla Model 3 performance comes in at 2.8.
https://www.0-60specs.com/tesla/model-3-0-60-times
https://www.fordoffeasterville.com/blogs/4896/ford-lightning...
I presume that F150 ain't getting round the corners very quickly.
I reckon optimising for straight line speed is a strange goal.
Regardless, optimizing a pick up for 0-60 time is a strange goal, unless you have some express desire to launch 2x4s a great distance in a complicated way.
Someday, commentators filling air time on ESPN's "Need to Yeet" may bring up this comment as "the Casual Remark That Started it All".
When land and labor (and fees leveraged by the city, state, etc.) are extremely expensive, the additional cost for these "luxury" items is very low by comparison. The buyers for these homes are buying everything new and it makes little sense to save $10k or so on such a visible amenity that is expensive to retrofit afterwards, on a home that costs $500k.
It is the same reason why crank windows are gone from cars. They aren't really status symbols.
Like car colors, new house design decisions tend to be driven a lot by various current fashions because they're the low risk for purchasing reasons whether by developers or perceived resale by buyers.
Personally, I didn't care. My new color schemes are muted but not neutral. And my kitchen/dining room choices were, I think, practical for the most part.
That has more to do with automotive engineering being tightly coupled to academic engineering and the latter having gone through a "people are idiots, rob them of the ability to put force on anything at every opportunity" phase.
The current Model 3 and Model Y are properly built competitively priced cars with many luxury features (such as huge trunks, rear climate control, all wheel drive, etc) and gadgets (Netflix on huge touchscreen, self-driving, etc).
Toto survives by brand name reco only nowadays.
I personally developed a feeling for things which are at the edge of "diminishing returns" curve. I get the things which are high-end enough, but not in the "pay 3x more to get 1% more" region.
Buying high quality things is a thing, but buying things just because they are high end and flashy is something else.
If I failed to convey what I tried to say in my first comment, let me give another examples.
Personally, I'll pay pretty penny for a bass guitar, if its build quality and features is worth it, not because of hype or it's a signature model of someone else's.
I'll buy a high end computer or a car with all (meaningful) options installed, not because I want to show off but I'll need the features or processing power.
I buy high end audio gear (for listening or recording), not because to brag about it but to use it.
And when I buy these things, I use them until they run out of steam, not until they're out of fashion.
(And for servers and other business machines, well, other criteria apply, but owning something in the Top500 has to count for something in terms of prestige.)
Admittedly that’s because he’s an overgrown child, but what the hey.
Or, hell, go on trips period, let alone once a year. I went a couple states over last September to visit a friend and it damn near broke my wallet. I didn't even fly either. Just drove.
Witness Erewhon fruit juices/smoothies.
The mantra was sell more, more, more and more, and to do that, you need to sell things to poor people to. A French enterpreneur would be happy selling phones only for the upper middle class and above. In America the idea was to install as many landlines as possible and gain with scale.
I think it's important to call out that the "capitalism = more stuff" idea is a bit of historical revisionism.
Soviet leaders very specifically saw the goal of Communism was to create abundance and a post scarcity society. There are lots of quotes in particular from Khrushchev about this:
“The socialist system will outstrip capitalism in labor productivity. It will provide the people with more goods, more cultural benefits, and ensure a higher standard of living.”
“Communism is the highest form of organization of society for labor. On the basis of powerful productive forces, it ensures the highest productivity of labor and abundance of material and cultural values for the whole people.”
And it's worth pointing out that that this isn't a Soviet invention. Marx himself made it a central point that material deprivation was an ill (not a feature) of captialism:
"After the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety…”
“The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially… but guaranteeing them the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now for the first time here.”
When communist abundance failed to materialize, there was a concerted effort to reframe the promise of communism to be purely one of egalitarianism and turn overconsumption against the West as a criticism.
To wit, that end stage capitalism has become an ouroboros eating its own tail that profits off artificial scarcity, while communism's primary defect (an inability to execute economic planning at a pace, scale, and granularity required to run a country well) is now technologically-feasible.
Though the greatest enemy to communism was always the people who made up the party and their fallibility as human beings.
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
But it surely looks to me like they are accelerating a movement towards a giant crisis of the capitalist system.
For Marx, capitalism is historically revolutionary precisely because it expands productive forces at a scale impossible under feudalism. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explicitly say the bourgeoisie created “more massive and more colossal productive forces” than earlier generations, and then argue that capitalism becomes self-contradictory because those productive forces outgrow capitalist property relations, producing crises of overproduction and destruction of wealth.
We can even say, that is a strict reading of Marx, communism is impossible if the problem of scarcity hasn't been solved before.
Marxism requires abundance as a material precondition for higher communism
and then left this thought (every system outgrows itself and becomes self-contradictory) applied to communism as an exercise to readers, which gave us Lenin and Stalin's (and Mao's) permanent bloody revolution as a pupil's halfbaked attempt at a solution, because their attempt to create communism contradicted itself way before it succeeded.
As always with communism, there's the lofty ideals and quotes on what it should be, but then there's the contrasting reality of Continental Europe's run at communism producing way less stuff.
When a company can make more profit by catering to the ultra-rich-only than selling a quality mass-market product at a reasonable price to masses, that says a lot about the economic segmentation of those masses.
Coke is a great example. There’s no product more useless and unnecessary than that flavored fizzy sugar water. Or should I say, high fructose corn syrup water. If you drink it, why? Probably because you were indoctrinated since childhood. Same goes for pretty much all fast food. There’s nothing good or desirable about any of it unless you’ve been indoctrinated into thinking that.
How can you be so sure you've broken free of the indoctrination, when what you have written is also the product of indoctrination? The only practical difference is the banner under which the indoctrination happened under.
One: It's terrible that you're shopping at a big box hardware retailer instead of a local hardware store and drinking high fructose mass market soda.
The other: Home Depot usually has what's needed, at a decent price, nearby. And Coke from the cooler next to the cash register is convenient, cold, and delicious.
Neither of these are wrong, and they're both worth keeping simultaneously in mind: life should be both aspirational and satisfying.
As you say it’s not one or the other.
I just wanted some landscaping rocks. I didn't think I was asking for much....
At least the grocery store sells cups at the register and there's delicious fountain Coke to be had on your way out the door.
https://shop.yokesfreshmarkets.com/store/yokes-fresh-market/...
...also WinCo Foods. Or at least the closest one to me does, right next to the in-store pizza counter.
Ah, that's too harsh.
Sugar water tastes good. Fast food is made quickly and it tastes good. There's no "indoctrination" that happens to make people realize that.
I agree that coke has 0 nutritional value. However, the flavor is agreeable to most people.
> However, the flavor is agreeable to most people.
Only because most people have undergone that indoctrination.
You can't imagine that people could try Coke and think "what is this ridiculously sugary shit?" The reason you can't imagine that? Indoctrination.
I have a son with severe autism. Indoctrination doesn't work on him because he doesn't even understand it.
We have actively kept soda away from him because it's bad for his teeth.
And yet, he absolutely loves the stuff (family members gave it to him). He even has severe food aversions limiting what he's willing to try.
You can't convince me that the only reason people like sugar water is because of indoctrination. That's just silly.
You are replying to someone saying "agreeable to most people" (emphasis mine).
Very clearly, they are perfectly able to imagine what you claim they can't imagine.
Wikipedia dates the popularity of soft drinks to the medieval middle east, but the origins of sweet fruity water are thought to be ~400 BC Persia at least.
you'll get a kick out of this. one concrt hall i went to recently was charging THIRTY THREE DOLLARS for a single shot of Whistle Pig. Not even the good stuff.
I don't find it unfortunate, but I also think this is a bit of a misdiagnosis of the problem.
Coke is a bad example of this because it's mostly unchanged (and when they did try to change it, it became infamous. The "new coke" change). For almost all other american consumer products, the old time well known brands have decided to cut corners and cheap out on production. It's particularly obvious with restaurants where so many of the old chains have moved over to pre-prepped microwaved foods instead of actually cooking in house.
Americans have learned that brands can't be trusted to maintain quality. If a company can get away with it, they'll use any sort of deception to raise the price or cheap out on the ingredients. And they relied heavily on "it's X brand" to keep selling the lower quality goods.
That, IMO, is what's driven americans to brand fracture. People have learned that for a lot of clothing there's no difference between what they get from Temu and what they get from Old Navy. In fact, there's a real good chance those goods were made in the same factory.
I drink water. Which means I'm just like Cristiano Ronaldo[1].
> foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product or deals for each purchase and will change brands in an instant
But you are, yourself, defining yourself partially here through your own purchasing habits. In fact you are doing it to a far more universal degree than most of the ones you criticize.
Not that I'm immune to it, but nor do I claim to be. I think it's useful signal just like anything else. Watch: My quintessential American habit is that I wear roughly the same nondescript black T shirt, black boxer briefs, black socks, and maybe an unlabeled black hoddie that I purchase off of Amazon, mostly just sorting by ratings. If at any point I reach into my closet and the stock-flow system that is my laundry habits have deemed it such that I am actually out of stock of any of these items, I immediately go to Amazon and purchase another 6- or 4- or 12-pack. If you feel you understand me better as a person after reading all that, you probably do.
Can you give a few examples of those brand-centric cultures? Which product categories do they follow? I've never seen anything like this, so if I were to go to one of the places that has this culture, I should probably know about it in advance.
It is kind of fascinating, having come from such a culture, to realize that in the end, Americans, at least the average of the America I met, are not nearly brand conscious as I and everyone in my place supposed them to be.
Of course, America is a fucking giant and diverse place, and I think that even native born Americans have no fucking idea of how many different Americas exist, so, take my views of America with a giant grain of salt.
Speaking as an American with a formative decade overseas, I think some of that may come from the economics of international trade.
People think about a faraway place based on what gets transported and sold from there. If a country's most-visible exports are gourmet food, you'd start thinking that perhaps the average resident is a gourmand. In the case of the US, those "cultural exports" often involve branded goods, copyrighted media, food franchises, etc.
The original usage of Gourmand was synonymous with gluttony and excess; while a gourmet might be satisfied with exquisitely prepared micro portions tucked away within an expansive plate criss crossed by a drizzle of ??, a gourmand wants the full stack pyramided to the maximal stope angle.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gourmand
Been a long time since it was purely about quantity.
Additionally, "heartily interested" in English usage implies an enthusiastic excess, large amounts, etc.
Still, it appears we agree about the original and primary usage.
As does your link via #1
You're doing okay on stope angle I'm guessing.
The Oxford dictionary also has both definitions, with the general use going back to 1758.
> 2.1758–One who is fond of delicate fare; a judge of good eating. (Cf. gourmet n.)
[0]: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gourmand_adj?tab=meaning_and_...
No, it's an observation that the first primary usage seemed to disagree (not that it did) and so it was observed that the second alt was used by the commenter above
OED has a lot to say about gourmand, Chesterfield in his 1758 letter that you quoted was saying that the Landgrave has a well stocked table .. good food and a lot of it, for he is a Gourmand. Following that Chesterfield example is a 1816 Coleridge extract from Statesman's Man that also about having a lot (but with no talent for preparation) - excess over taste:
Their best cooks have no more idea of dressing a turtle than the gourmands themselves
1. a. One who is over-fond of eating, one who eats greedily or to excess, a glutton.
> Well, you had to go to #2
This is clearly a disparaging remark meant to discredit their comment. So what if it's #2? It's a definition in multiple dictionaries. This usage warranted its own definition.
> in an American English dictionary
Same thing here- italicizing American as if it means anything. Again, both Merriam Webster and the OED carry both definitions.
> It's a usage that has morphed in recent times, sure
"Recent" being 1758. 268 years. Long enough that it doesn't warrant a nit anymore.
> the first 1a primary
Again: the non-quantity usage warranted a dictionary definition.
> Following that Chesterfield example is a 1816 Coleridge extract
Ignoring the 1804 extract before that and the extracts after it.
All in all I find this type of interaction (needing to be "correct" instead of accepting that there are multiple usages) to be extremely distasteful, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
Yeah, maybe slow your roll and think about that, along with everything else you've projected.
Clearly I accepted there are multiple usages, I specifically mentioned multiple definitions above.
You mentioned it in a way that makes #2 sound irrelevant because it's not the "original and primary definition" and diminished it with "recent times".
This is what people are taking issue with.
You're not actually accepting that definition as a proper definition. You're treating it like a minor offshoot.
And I have no idea why you think they're projecting.
Additionally, "heartily interested" in English usage implies an enthusiastic excess, large amounts, etc.
Try harder.
Gourmand still, in large parts of the English speaking world, carries large overtones of excessive eating under the guise of quality eating.
If I were to make a guess, I suspect that in your part of the world some of the French persuasion made frequent reference to those that overstack their plates as gourmands and it has since locally become synonymous with gourmet as the troll escaped them.
Never heard of it being a fat person, except in so far as the word is old fashioned enough to conjure the image of a fancy dressed fat person eating fancy food.
Which is really no better evidence than you offer.
Even if you removed the word "might", they wouldn't be opposites. With it, they're even further from opposites.
I made no claim they were opposites, read again, that was another commenter.
I answered the question as to the distinction between two words, I did not assert the two words were opposite.
I didn't say you made the claim. "Read again" right back at you...?
But come on, the comment you replied to was "How so?", asking how they were opposites.
You were clearly reinforcing the claim with your answer. If you didn't want to do that, you should have started with something like "They're not, but"
> The original usage of Gourmand was
Your original “well actually” is incorrect by your own admission. The correct statement is “a gourmand [was] [in some sense] the opposite of a gourmet”.
Not as punchy. I can see why you exaggerated, but as a fellow pedant I can’t approve of the misinformation.
> One who is fond of delicate fare; a judge of good eating. (Cf. gourmet n.)
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gourmand_adj?tab=meaning_and_...
And yet somehow, with first 3/4 of this sentence, you've given a more accurate story about America than is almost ever provided!
I had a recent conversation with a colleague out of SE Asia and it was surprising to me how little access they have to a diversity of product. For example, I was describing my homelab which uses a lot of Minisforum hardware (mostly due to size constraints) and I found out that, despite literally being geographically closer, said product could not be purchased in their country. So I would imagine that leads to more homogenization than what might occur in the States. But that's just my ignorant conjecture.
I've been around a good amount of the US and yeah, being very judgey on brands just doesn't seem to be much of a thing. Maybe if I hung around rich people it'd be different, but I do know some rich people and they typically don't seem to give a shit either.
Most rich people I know not only dont give a shit a brands, they actively judge you negatively for buying expensive brands that they see as non-utilitarian. Not even a tech thing either, maybe it's because chicago has a generally blue collar vibe and it would be different with rich people on the coasts, but I know many rich people and almost all of them judge for wasting money and buying into advertising psyops
Perhaps those folks found certain brands regularly have decent (enought) quality and stick with them, and/or they have a personal aesthetic that they've developed that may be 'limited' to certain brands.
Some folks also don't want to go through the effort of constantly/regularly (re-)evaluating things: they've found that Brand X gives them enough quality/value, and have stopped looking.
This argument stops holding water when those same people start judging other people for not also using Brand X.
Brands may serve as camouflage when you're trying to conform, but conforming is not an identity. Your identity is based on what you create, not what you consume.
Just an observation. My computer bag is older than most of my coworkers.
I've absolutely heard eulogies that talk about stylish grandma was up to the very end. The could go on about how she never left the house without looking like she could have been ready for a photo shoot. How she brightened every gathering she was a part of, and even had this marvelous ability to pick the perfect accessories, including -- yes -- handbags.
You seem to be conflating two things that are different -- "fabulous taste", and "conforming/consuming". Putting together and accessorizing an outfit is an act of creation. Looking sharp is usually quite the opposite of conforming.
Remember that when you dress with style, you're brightening the day of the people who look at you, like a walking work of art. Some people look at it as vain, but other people understand it's making the world a more pleasant place, just like good manners or a helping attitude. If you can appreciate the way a tasteful statue adorns a park, you can appreciate the way a tasteful outfit -- handbag included -- does the same.
When I find myself reading Consumer Reports or The Wirecutter looking for "what is the best toothbrush" it's not that I actually need the best toothbrush. I'd be perfectly happy with a good toothbrush. What I'm trying to do is avoid spending a bunch of money on something that looked like a good option and turns out to be ineffective, unreliable, short-lived, or otherwise terrible. Most retailers are absolutely overrun with trash now.
Generally at Costco it's not a worry, if it's a crappy product they're not selling it.
You know it's decent at Costco or you can return it in a few months when it craps out.
You can't just say this and leave us hanging. Which countries?
Costco itself, in a way, is a sort of Wittgenstein's ladder, or Wittgenstein's warehouse, because eventually you realize that everything sold under the Kirkland label is just a de-badged top brand. If you still reach for brand names for staple goods at Costco knowing full well the Kirkland product is either the same or superior, then you know that the shadows of brand names still haunt you and occlude your sight. When you are able to escape these shadows and see the sun, then you are free.
I don't even have a Costco membership! Maybe this is a Socal/urban thing?
In any case, I think you're overthinking it, people love Costco.
I feel like logos are 100% done now.
The best clothes here in Sweden, from our own Swedish brands, have no logos. And have not been for a long time. Scandinavian minimalism and quality is the best.
Asia is the one obsessed with brands. Europe is not. We care about quality.
I actually like this as someone with a big logo gucci bag is easy to frame right away as a terrible human.
This is not how we generally work in Europe, but you were not precise of your destinations. Life in 2026 ain't some Victorian novel.
To me, that is a modern marvel. I don't want people to buy things that they don't need, and I also don't like the crowds, but I can't help but feel grateful for a stocked grocery store that is accessible to basically everyone—isn't that the dream?
You wouldn't starve to death, but you'd absolutely want to supplement (both for more calories and probably for vitamins). But also you'd be eating that rice every single day pretty much, how else are you getting through that much rice?
EDIT: the actual point is that it's probably not literal. Ease of quantifying and transporting dried rice over long distances without refrigeration probably had a lot of how they ended up with a Koku as useful measurement.
don't get me wrong, white rice isn't the worst thing in your diet but i think it's great to diversify with some whole grains and lots of beans (a real superfood), many of which can be had for 2$ to 3$ per 2k calories.
Lack of thiamine will get you first but you can switch to Brown rice which has both
I know, price is what the market will bear blah blah. There is just something that feels fundamentally wrong about a product cheaper to produce being sold at a higher price purely because its the better choice for your health.
Another cute principle in that category is convenience pricing. The 0.5L cola bottle with resealable twist cap is more expensive per liter than the 0.25L cans, purely because the bottle is more convenient to use on the go.
You just described almost all food sold in the US. The cheapest stuff is pure garbage. The more you try to escape the preprocessed garbage and get back to the raw, unprocessed, untreated, food, the more you pay. Insane, but true. (And then we wonder why Americans are so unhealthy.)
How much protein do you want for "at least a little"?
> As a rule of thumb, one koku was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for one year.
I assume "sufficient rice" means it needs to be supplemented, and this is supported by the footnote as well:
> Apparently 1.8 koku (1 koku and 8 to) was actually required for nourishment by a man each year, according to the conventional wisdom documented in a "home code" (kakun [ja]) of a certain merchant family in the Edo period.
(Note that last year, 5kg bags were as much as 8000jpy for standard rice, prices have come down a bit, but not a lot.)
There’s also been a rice shortage/crisis in Japan recently, which has pushed prices up even more. See here → https://www.borgenmagazine.com/japans-rice-crisis/ and here → https://old.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1kthwmr/e/
Surely also restaurants and larger vendors have ways to buy rice in bulk in Japan - maybe they just don't have the American version for of this for consumers ? Sort of like how in the US people can go to a restaurant supply store (but often dont)
Membership is an up-front cost. That excludes those who can't part with the cash for no immediate benefit. Depending on what you buy, and what else is available around you, breakeven can take a good part of the year and a sizable number of purchases. Basically, you have to have the cash flow to play with money over time, even over a short timeline like an annual membership cycle.
Costco also sells many if not all items in relatively large quantity, so membership makes more sense for those who can afford to pre-buy and store more than they need. It's the inverse of something like a so-called dollar store, which is too often where poor people get stuck buying smaller than grocery-standard quantities at higher per-unit costs.
Of course, sometimes it makes sense to pool funds, buy together on one membership, and break packs. That costs coordination. Corner stores in poorer areas where I live often do this, with business memberships and resale certificates. At a margin, of course.
I can't pretend to truly understand what it's like not being able to afford Costco. But I've had some opportunities to hear people who see it as out of reach. And to make some trips with "guests".
When I coached little league, we had parents who walked miles to games because the bus fare (1.50) for 3-4 people would push them over the edge. Vulture companies like dollar general exist because they sell consumer staples in smaller quantities at a slightly lower price, but much higher unit cost.
Costco uses an upfront membership to allow you to buy large units of products at a consistently good price. The consumer needs excess cash flow for it to work. Saving on toilet paper doesn’t work if I can’t make my car payment.
There's a large overlap between people who cannot "afford" to shop at Costco and people who spend hundreds of dollars a month on scratch-offs. Whether or not someone shops at Costco is mostly a function of preferences and behavioral choices, not dollars.
Even if they could afford the 65$ membership (yes anyone car). They couldn’t afford the per package goods. Is this even alluring to them? They demonstrate poor basic economic understanding.
Probably the same people who dump money into scams fronting as homeless assistance organizations.
Of course, there is no counter argument, just emotion.
Dollar General now has a similar profit margin to Costco:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COST/costco/profit...
Dollar Tree is slightly higher but much more volatile:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DLTR/dollar-tree/p...
It is possible to be too poor to afford a membership club (even Sam’s Club). But you absolutely do not need to be a “professional with a good wage” to afford it or benefit from it.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/sheddata...
You don't need to buy the membership with cash. Credit card, pay off $3-5 a week with your food savings, you'll barely pay any interest.
Also not having $400 would have to be the number after buying food with your paycheck, right? If you get the membership as part of your first food purchase, including that nice bag of rice, you'll be okay.
I’m guessing you don’t know many lower income people.
Not only are credit cards generally not part of the picture for these folks, but often they don’t even have bank accounts.
And for buying in bulk (which is basically what Costco offers) to work, you need a larger amount of available cash up front, and a home with sufficient safe space for storage.
And of course you need some sort of transport to bring your bulk purchases home from the Costco, often built on cheap land away from dense housing.
I'm not assuming that. If you get a paycheck at all you can impulse buy a $65 thing.
> And for buying in bulk (which is basically what Costco offers) to work, you need a larger amount of available cash up front, and a home with sufficient safe space for storage.
The bag of rice is cheap and compact, along with many other options. Your upfront need can be covered by your normal spend.
Yes it does need a mild amount of safety.
> transport
For sure, but I was responding about the $65 issue.
> I'm not assuming that. If you get a paycheck at all you can impulse buy a $65 thing.
Not to buy the membership, but to gain meaningful benefit from it afterwards by buying in bulk in the long term, despite the greater upfront cost, motivation, planning, etc. that that requires.
If you want it, it's one choice to make. No extra discipline.
I would be very very surprised if there were not adjustments that could be made that would significantly uplift these peoples situation
A smartphone is not an optional component of modern life. You need a smartphone to apply for many minimum wage jobs now
I think it's accessible to even the poorest people who work in the US, but it doesn't mean it's cheap for them or worthwhile without a home/reasonable commute.
Time is a major commodity for people working 2 or more jobs and an hour and back commute to Costco is often not worth it.
Okay I'm really curious, where do you live and what are you eating for a "fast food meal"? That's at least 10x what I pay for a fast food meal, and although I know California and other places are expensive, I wouldn't have guessed they are that expensive.
You mean for a family... I hope?
not only is the membership cost up front, but because you're buying in bulk, the cost of the food is also up front; that doesn't work if you're literally living 2-week paycheck to paycheck. Nearly 40% of Americans have less than $500 in savings.
> $65 is the cost of one or two fast food meals ... Am I so out of touch?
yes
Cashflow constraints are a good predictor for problematic behaviour.
Example: Being poor is not the reason for drug addiction, but drug addiction will make you poor in the long run.
The one good thing about this is: As low liquidity is often used as a classifier to gate access, a single kickstart payment can sometimes do wonders.
A security deposit for a flat and money for a Costco card can change lives.
You can buy normal or even individual quantities, like a single roll of paper towels, with no membership required. I imagine other big cities have similar stores, probably in lower-income areas, that fill a similar role.
In past years their profits match the approximate amount of revenue from their memberships (which, I suspect is the origin of this idea), although recently their profit exceeds their membership revenue by a fair margin (total membership revenue was less than half of operating income for 2025). Membership is not what causes them to be profitable since the “cost” of the membership is operating the rest of the business. You can’t separate retail sales from membership sales since they mutually require each other in the business model. If they got rid of their retail sales (which are, in fact, more profitable than membership sales on their own) then the membership would be worthless. The reverse is not true.
It falls to less than 50% when you properly compare it to pretax profits.
It also doesn’t factor in the 2% rebate that a huge number of members receive.
Costco’s total net sales for fiscal 2025 were roughly $268 billion. With executive members driving ~73.6% of that, and a 2% rebate on qualified purchases, a rough back-of-envelope estimate would place total rebates issued in the range of $3–4 billion, but Costco does not publicly break this out as a discrete figure in its financial statements.
In any case, I’m not saying it isn’t a significant source of revenue, I’m saying that “they only make money/they make most of their money from memberships” is a deceptive framing that is oft repeated. It makes it sound like they are selling things at cost when they aren’t. Their margins are in line with the grocery industry as a whole. Their pricing is an effect of low opex and volume. They make most of their profit from selling things. If they didn’t charge for membership they wouldn’t lose money.
What? This is 100% of 100% of us.
If I decided to go full homestead and grow and process this myself, how long would that take? Way, way, WAY more than 2 days. Scale and specialization has done some amazing things and this is a great example of it.
that same "koku" ensures - you can buy your portion of rice once a year & as long as you keep it dry - you're certainly sure you won't starve.
same applies to boxed pasta boxes, beans etc.
storing meat would surely be more expensive & a much bigger hustle.
Yet, I keep going. I like the cranberry bread, the cheap chicken, the granola, I like not thinking about what to buy so much. I like that it's of an acceptable quality at an acceptable price. I like that I can return stuff easily without getting shit for it. I like "scoring" deals on stuff that seems like a good value.
I don’t want a bunch of cellulose in my cheese either.
Everything you mentioned is a prepackaged, premade item. It’s not fresh. The Kirkland Parmesan is cut and sealed in a factory. Not cut by my local grocery or Whole Foods from a giant wheel that has the Italian markings.
The last bag of chicken breasts I got were almost the size of turkey breast and it was woody and stringy. Google if you don’t believe me.
Ah, therein lies the difference. You don't make any mention of taste or texture, just the marketing.
Yes, genuinely. At most stores, "store brand" equates to "cheap, lower quality". Kirkland Signature is sometimes higher quality than other brands, and there are items for which they're my preferred brand.
[1] Many condiments are Kosher not because the recipe inherently is, but because it's easy to do without much downside so doing so pencils out handily. I couldn't resist the parenthesis joke.
Stuff like USDA Prime meats are substantially cheaper and same quality as anywhere else. I smoke a lot of meats though.
Organic produce is super cheap. Especially stuff like pre-cut broccoli, lettuce mixes, etc.
Protein powders, crackers, chips, organic yogurt, organic milk, organic eggs, cheese, prosciutto, etc.
Also liquor including decent beer and wine selection.
I get all this stuff, mid to high quality compared to Whole Foods or whatever grocery store. Sure, I could buy higher quality organic meats directly from the farmer over USDA Prime at Costco or more sustainable seafood and what not, but it would easily cost 3-5x.
I don't buy it alot, but people love the bakery - croissants, pies, cakes, etc. and they're high quality, comparable to most local bakeries.
Regular Costco for rotisserie chicken.
In life you can't have everything.
Heh, I guess you mean apart form true French ones. You won't find them anywhere else in the world, there is always something off in dough or overall process so result is different and worse.
But its true that ignorance is quite often a bliss.
Hear me out.
It's right next to Costco, literally in the same mall.
Products are kind of shittier but they're good enough. But good enough is better for me because the rest of the experience is just better.
Walking through Sam's Club is often a breeze whereas through Costco I waddle like a penguin sandwiched between a waddle of penguins, each competing for enough space and quiet and mental clarity to score a good purchase.
It can be panic inducing.
At Sam's Club I don't even walk to a cash register. I pay with my phone and I'm out.
They don't even ask me to show my ID at the door.
But even if they did, no way am I shopping at Sam's Club for the same reason that I'm never shopping at its parent company, Walmart. Walmart arguably did more to destroy small town America than any other company, and it also treats retail employees like shit. On the other hand, Costco is one of the best places to work as a retail employee (which is why they have so little turnover).
But if you're still shopping at Costco then you don't really care about the effects that these big box stores have on small town economies.
You're just into performative activism.
But Costco does have better working conditions so I'll give you that.
Not saying you specifically, but it drives me up the wall that the same people who complain big business bad have so much overlap with the people who champion government policy that makes it so only the big businesses that can amortize the fixed costs of doing business over absurd quantities can exist competitively.
Walmart does, and it achieved its dominance by deliberately targeting and destroying small town America economies.
Costco operates quite differently from Walmart and therefore does not have the same effect as Walmart.
Walmart carries a much much larger selection (~150K SKUs at a SuperCenter vs ~4K SKUs at a Costco) and therefore competes with local grocery stores and pretty much any local store that carry just about everything needed for day-to-day living.
Costco aims at a much narrower demographic, and is designed for bulk buying, which most people don't do, or might only do for a few items. That's why, though its prices might be lower than a local grocery, it doesn't necessarily put the grocery store out of business.
It did not, and does not, target small towns the way Walmart did (doesn't do it anymore much because all the small businesses are gone now).
Also, Costco has a much smaller footprint across in the US -- about 600 stores vs ~4600 Walmart.
> You're just into performative activism.
No. While I'd like to do my shopping at small local stores out of principle, and I do where I have a choice, most don't exist anymore, and I can't resurrect them. Even the small "local" grocery that I do shop at, it turns out (I found out quite by accident on Wikipedia) is now owned by some larger company. That means instead of the "best" options, I have to choose the "least worst" options.
I also refuse to go to Costco these days. Every once in a while my memory fades and I agree to accompany a family member or friend, and am quickly reminded why I should stick to Aldi.
Parking is easy, the store is quiet, there are no vendors set up yet.
I have my list of things I need, I get it, get out, easy.
Idk, I’ve never felt the pull of ‘I MUST buy some new electronics’ when I walk by the tvs.
I don’t really understand the hate against ’consumption’ either. I’ve gotta eat and I’ve gotta shit, so I might as well go and by the cheap toilet paper and food. I don’t pay attention to all the other stuff.
Then I think Costco has done its perfect job and exactly the goal the founder set out to create: Quality goods at affordable prices.
They optimize for those 2 things first. Consequently, everything else becomes a management of chaos (the part that stresses you out and thusly hate).
If they did try to make the experience better, it would cost them someplace. And honestly, you're just at whole foods at that point.
Better than optimizing for short-term shareholder value like most other firms...
I remember loving a Costco trip with friends at age 18, because we'd walk every aisle, and there were always so many cool things and at prices we could afford. But now as an adult with a stressful and rushed lifestyle due to children, it kills me that it's so difficult to find the 10 things I need quickly and get out, without walking every aisle. They clearly really want you to walk every aisle!
And note how the modern Democratic Party - the originators of that law back in 1936 - utterly failed to give a crap about the issue.
From the article on the Act -
"Enforcement of the RPA has declined since the 1980s. In 2022, FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya endorsed a revival of enforcing the RPA in order to curb price discrimination. In April 2024, sixteen members of Congress wrote to the FTC urging for a revival of the enforcement of the Act. In December 2024, the FTC sued liquor distributor Southern Glazer's under the Act, asserting that they charged small stores more than they charged large chains. On January 17, 2025, the closing days of the Biden Administration, the FTC filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo. In May 2025, The FTC voted to dismiss the PepsiCo suit but the suit against Southern Glazer's is proceeding."
It's a low bar but the Democratic party has given more of a crap about it than anyone else.
The government telling competitive buyers and sellers which kinds of price negotiation are legal and which are not is terrible economics because it attenuates price signals.
I'm thinking the faded-out enforcement was due to a certain 1980's President, and his administration's "Greed is God" ethos. A lot of protections for the little guy got dumped on his watch.
Enforcement of the RPA is overseen by the Federal Trade Commission, but cases have declined since the 1980s due to the complexity of the law and the requirement to prove intended damages. Juries in recent cases claiming RPA violations have not found the defendants guilty.
There are still plenty of produce stands, bakeries, and butcher shops in the country. Most of what was driven out of business were small bodega-style corner stores.
They mostly exist now in a different form as gas station markets, or in dense urban areas like NYC, or some central business districts.
Costco carries one or two options for a given thing, and are outright missing many things you might want. As nice as Costco is for buying things on a budget when you're going to use them up fully, I think it would be a bit of a challenge to make them your only grocery source. Doable as a sort of self-imposed challenge, no problem, there's certainly enough for that, but you'd be missing a lot of things, and/or wasting money on huge quantities of things you won't use. The quality is generally pretty decent (I may have more brand loyalty for "Kirkland" than almost any other brand) but not necessarily the most premium options. If you are the type to even consider the specialty shop in the first place you're more likely to be unsatisfied by Costco than a grocery store.
Then for all the niche stuff that I do truly care about, there's the specialty stores or really the farmer's market. That's where I'll indulge for the first press seasonal olive oils, all sorts of pluot/apriplums/plumpicots combinations, short shelf life wild berries, blueberry/orange/mint blossum honey and whatnot.
> Milk, eggs, flour, flowers, microfiber towels, batteries, salt and pepper
If you can walk out of Costco month after month with just those essentials, and never pick up any of the nice-looking and reasonably-priced goodies there, I think it's safe to say that you have the level of discipline required to be financially successful and not have to care about whether you're getting the best price per unit of whatever it is you're buying. :-)
The sabbath was always meant for man and that makes a lot of people very angry because whatever ideological or religious lip service someone gives their behavior demonstrate they hate man, or more subtly, love mankind like dollars in their pocket, stripping humans of their humanity.
This mendacious attitude is also a major driver of enshitification.
The internet and executive social distancing has made a huge swath of people lose touch with how unique individuals are, so they treat humanity with the bigotry and coldness that the law of large numbers has lead them to, which is ultimately very mean.
What you wrote sounds intelligent but belies an ignorance of the business model.
Long ago in undergrad I took a retail marketing class and we did a field trip to Costco; the GM told us it was part of their policy to rearrange parts of the store occasionally so that you had to browse the entire place to check off your shopping list. This increases the likelihood that you stumble across new products. So it’s this combination of “best price/quality without decision fatigue” plus some impulse buying that works for them. The fact that they are figuring out the price/quality trade off for you up front probably also makes it easier to impulse buy with fewer regrets.
Ofcourse it's very convenient that their app doesnt show what aisle things belong to so that was a fun realization.
Maybe it depends on the GM.
Hope I do not jinx it :)
This is an interesting take. Spending hours min-maxxing the "best" combination of product/price in every given category has always been peak consumerism as an identity to me. Subreddits filled with tens of thousands of posts and strongly held groupthink opinions about why knife brand x is the best option for you to open your amazon packages, or how much you need to try the new mechanical keyboard switch collaboration, deep dives on wirecutter, waiting for the right sale, etc.
I go to costco because I don't want to do any of that for my groceries and basic home needs. I need oil for my car this weekend, and beer and burgers to hang out after I'm done with it. I don't want to spend 10 hours reading about the best 5w30 oil (or should I get 0w20?), I want a high-quality option at a fair price.
We all have to eat, we all have to wipe our asses, we (mostly) all need to change the oil in our cars.
I don’t really see the purpose in describing the purchase of necessities as an identity.
Parent Comment was trying to reject the personal identity of consumer while their words actively affirming their identity as a consumer in the marketplace. You can reject the personal identity of a consumer all you want, but businesses will still judge you by your actions (how much you spend).
> In contemporary consumer society, the purchase and the consumption of products have evolved beyond the mere satisfaction of basic human needs,[1] transforming into an activity that is not only economic but also cultural, social, and even identity-forming.
Another thing on the top of my mind is oatmeal - I’m not a oatmeal connoisseur but I can’t taste the difference between the 5-10 types of oatmeal in the store, not that I’ve an active choice to try them. Do we need that much diversity in oatmeal choices?
And so on and so on.
We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time.
Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with nowhere to store them.
What I want is an anti-costco. More like a bodega. Still curated, maybe a larger mark-up, but smaller quantities of everything. Half loaves of bread, small bags of frozen veg, enough sugar or flour to bake just a couple batches.
I get my dogs seizure meds there and they're about $10 a month but at a regular pharmacy they'd be $300+.
Anecdotally I feel like a lot of TJ's shoppers shift into Costco shoppers as they age up.
I go to Costco once every three months or so and buy paper towels, detergent, and other consumables that have long shelf lives. I don't feel drawn to it; it's just the warehouse for boring items to buy in bulk. Their hot dog is OK. But a lifestyle? No.
4 shops/year I wouldn't have thought would justify the cost
We're a bit odd though. Highly budget conscious, 4 kidsto feed (including 2 teenagers), and European tastes in food.
> So, what do you guys want to do? Feel like pooling all the cash we have and going to Trader Joe's to buy an apple?
(TBH, I think he said "whole foods" there, but the sentiment is the same.)
Maybe savings are that large if you're comparing against regular prices at retailers, but if you wait for sales, they're as cheap, if not cheaper than Costco.
Costco really incentivizes shopping in bulk, from the huge value-pack sized portions to the focus on frozen & dry goods to the super-sized carts to the anxiety-inducing shopping experience. My wife and I shoot to go no more than once a quarter, just because it's a hassle.
We found our habits (and need for Costco) changed dramatically once we moved into a home and could now put in a chest freezer and pile toilet paper rolls in a corner.
I actually only got Costco originally when I lived in Hawaii and it's kinda a requirement there but kept it cause it's actually really nice.
I think one danger with Costco is that it encourages overconsumption. It may feel like you're saving money - but you'd save even more just not buying a robot vaccum or VR headset.
If you do the research and decide you would benefit from a robot vacuum, compare different models to decide on the best fit for your needs, and then check prices at different stores and find that it's cheapest at Costco - then yeah I'd say you're saving money. But I'd venture to guess that most robot vacuums are just bought on impulse during Black Friday sales (for example) - which I don't think counts as saving money even if you get a big discount from the MSRP.
To be fair, this isn't a problem unique to Costco. I'm guilty of buying a lot of junk on Amazon.
That sounds like you might well be spending more time than the money you're saving.
I heard you can also get someone with a membership to buy you a gift card, and use the reloadable gift card for continued access. (Or buy one for yourself and then cancel your membership.)
This is becoming even harder to achieve nowadays, there is all this variety in size of products and more and more over the years(at least in the midwest) it seems that grocery stores want to take the small product and apply minimums to deals.
there will be an 8oz offering and a 14 oz offering, the 8 oz will be on sale but only if you buy at least 2 or 3, its incredibly frustrating.
It has incidentally made my junk food habits better though, If i see 2 for 5$ for a package of cookies with no minimum purchase, I'll likely grab a box. As soon as they apply that minimum, i am gonna be thinking "do i really wanna eat all those cookies?" instead i end up with 0.
Have you tested this by buying just one, and checking the price on the receipt?
I ask because someone once told me this was illegal in the US; that a shop was allowed to display the sale price only for a larger quantity, but they had to honor the same price per unit if you only bought one. (I think we were discussing produce at the time, in case that matters.) I've long wondered if that was true or just an urban legend.
Nobody has suggested that they malfunction.
I thought this was obvious, but to spell it out: I was suggesting that they might not necessarily be programmed to apply a different price depending on quantity. An item might have a flat price of $1 each, but labeled on the shelf/bin as "special: five for $5" to encourage larger purchases.
I have personally encountered this. Meanwhile, I do not recall an example of buying a quantity smaller than suggested and being charged a higher price per item. Hence my question about labeling and law.
> Also, if you do not have a member/loyalty account, you do not get those discounts.
I'm not talking about membership discounts.
That's not a special, that's just math. I've only ever seen that kind of nonsense from Amazon. I've seen Buy 3 for $5, while the individual is $1.99. If you buy one you pay $1.99, if you buy two you pay $3.98, but if you buy three, you end up paying $5. The receipt will show 3 @ $1.99 with a discount under the item bringing the total to $5. My store routinely has various meat offerings of Buy 1, get 2 free. If you ring up one, it shows the price. If you ring up 3, it shows all three items, but discount the cheapest two prices so you only pay for the single highest priced item.
Major chains are not going to be futzing around with gotcha tags. They know they'll be called out for it. It would be the bodega style places that I'd be suspect of that kind of shenanigans.
> I'm not talking about membership discounts.
Why not? It clearly shows two different prices. If you are not using a discount/loyalty card, you pay the full price. A lot of times I've seen when you use a line with a human checker they'll have a card on stand by (probably their own) to get the points while giving the buyer the lower prices.
It is a special when the usual price is $2 each.
> Why not?
Because I'm not interested.
Meijer is slowly becoming a bad offender of these types of things, Jewel has been horrifying for years, to the point where i avoid their store entirely. The final straw was this limit applied to gallons of milk.
No, WTF? That's not a thing, why would you even credit such obvious nonsense?
We'd go in and walk the store - the whole store - aisle by aisle.
If I saw something like a 2-pound bag of tortellini, but thought two pounds was too big a quantity for me, I'd ask, "does anybody want to split two pounds or tortellini?" One might say yes, so we'd throw the tortellini in the shopping cart.
At the end, one person (the membership holder) would pay, and we'd divvy up the result of our haul into reusable containers, in the parking lot. One of us would then take point on itemizing the receipt, and we'd pay back the person with the membership.
In hindsight, I think we did this more to socialize than to save money, but we definitely did save money. Even as a single apartment-dweller, I bought my fair share of 24-packs of yogurt and 5-pound bags of frozen vegetables.
This was my introduction to collective buying and at the same time the fact there's a bigger world out there than where one lives.
After college, I only had one roommate and Costco didn't work as well. The quantities for certain things are just a bit much. Buying 36 eggs for 4 adults made sense. Buying 36 eggs for 2 adults... not so much. I ended up going to Costco for toilet paper and gas, and that's it.
To this day, I'm still the "spouse" on one of those college roommates' costco memberships, LOL.
"Who's been eating all the eggs?"
"I'm not sure, how many eggs do you eat?"
"Not many, like 3 eggs in the morning."
"(Name), that's 21 eggs per week"
"... oh, yeah."
This friend was known as the mongoose for the rest of college.
The shoppers there might still be the same costco members though :)
Shopping like you're talking about (small quantities of everything) will easily double your grocery spending, and I don't know why you would do it unless there's something about the experience you really like. If that's what you want, the chain that comes to mind is Fresh Market if you're in the eastern US, or just a local market.
Almost everyone can, though. And then they can stock up tons of food in many varieties.
Next time you move apartments, consider getting one that's 5 square feet bigger.
If the writer wants to make it anything more than that... They are a bit too obsessed with self-image vs wasting money and, dare I say, a loser for judging others over something as classist as personal finances. Feels like the write-up is just a statement piece meant to either rattle people for engagement or make the writer feel more hip than they actually are.
But they're like the gas and food at Costco - reliable in quality and comparatively well-priced. I'd buy clothes from other places if I knew where they were. Online shopping is a crapshoot and I mean that (almost) literally: they shoot crap into your mailbox. Department stores and clothes stores at the mall are overpriced for average quality. Ditto for IRL furniture stores.
Careful - even Gen-Z is looking at Kirkland clothing for certain pieces, and some furniture (like the Murphy bed I bought from them) is better when it's bland and greige
I've heard good things about their wool socks.
I actually like Costco's generic black-and-orange athletic sock as a daily driver. I treat them poorly; we take off our shoes in the house but not socks. As they wear out, I throw them away; once a year I buy a new pack to refresh the losses. I use the Smartwool for activities but otherwise take good care of them. They last.
Costco pledges (I have no idea if its true) that they offer goods at cost, no markup, and their profits (net income ? this is where it gets fuzzy) are simply the membership fees. In fact, I think there's a lawsuit from a Costco purchaser to get back some tariffs if Costco gets refunded tariffs.
So the idea is premium groceries (and homegoods, and tires, and pharma, etc) with zero retail markup.
Its a compelling idea, and it works because it actually seems to work. What you write is "priced well comparatively" is (according to the legend) the wholesale pricing at the quantities offered (again, I'm not sure about spoilage and some of the other details)
It's not a subtle point. Members buy a membership and if they shop there enough recoup the cost of the membership and more. It's their entire business model.
Yes. Happily.
which is fitting since the author used the phase "cheugy" unironically.
(I love the Shatner version, sorry!)
I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere
So it started there
> Revenue from membership fees accounts for the majority of the company's profits, accounting for over 72% of the company's net operating income in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, and 65.5% in fiscal year 2024.[115][a]
It could also be similar insurance floats: premiums and claims generally even out, but they make their returns while they're holding people's money.
(Perhaps it's explained in their financial statements, but I've never been curious enough to check.)
Affiliations with providers of products like insurance, bottled water delivery, checks and the credit card are also sources of revenue.
But also remember regular members don't get cash back. The ratio is about 50/50. So about 40 million people pay for membership and don't get cash back.
That's not quite their policy - their explicit policy is "The Reward is not guaranteed to be equal to or greater than the Executive upgrade fee paid." - but they will refund you if you ask for it.
To justify the subscription I made the commitment to buy all my necessities there that I could, and in return I get back the equivalent of a month’s worth of free groceries.
The prices never really worked out in our favor and the experience of finding a cool product we did truly love only to find it not stocked the following month is awful.
It really makes me wonder how astroturfed the brand is.
Comparing one revenue line to total net profit is a category error: the numerator and denominator measure different things.
In FY2024, Costco did $249.6B in net sales and collected $4.8B in membership fees. Gross margin on product sales was about $25B. That $25B is 5x the membership fee revenue. So, even if you consider membership fees as being free money, membership fees are only 16% of gross margin.
Moreover, without those product sales, the membership would be worth zero and no one would buy it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Feel free to click "edit" and fix it: that's kind of the whole point of Wikipedia. :)
In their 2025 filing, gross margin on merchandise was $30B, but SG&A cost $25B (with membership fees at $5.3B).
Note that $2.6B of those membership fees will go back to members as membership rewards, which is interesting too.
In a Costco, we are all equal. I could be shopping for the same set of beige slacks right next to the CEO of a multi-million dollar company and never know it. We'll own the same Waterpik. Identical towels. Our lawn furniture will look the same.
Everything is purchased at a fair price. And we know it's a fair price because it's Costco. The workers are happy because they are given a fair wage and respect by an executive team that doesn't think they're better than them.
Yes, you have to admit to yourself that a certain part of shopping at Costco is rejecting iconoclasm. You must be okay being part of a crowd. But the other side of that - are you able to surrender? Can you deny yourself when you find something that is legitimately good? Must you be different to the point of self-detrimental?
So yes, I will go to a store that has better olive oil or coffee or oranges. But how can you not love Costco?
The membership is the whole reason they can offer the deals they do.
Costco revenue is about 2% membership fee and 98% sales of merchandise and services (most of which is merchandise, not services.)
Now, the membership fee is its main source of profit (because the merchandise sales are extremely low margin), but not its main source of revenue.
Costco derives the majority of their profits from the membership fee:
What it buys for me is, "not Walmart People". Totally worth the investment.
I know what you're thinking, but if a Costco membership is elitism, then fine you can call me elitist. Along with apparently 30% of the American population over the age of 18. We're the big bad 30-percenters, I guess.
I got my law degree there!
I like money.
- fighting for space everywhere: fighting for a parking lot, avoiding people seeming to ram you with their shopping cart, waiting for the extended family of seven in front of you to pick a cereal so you can leave the aisle, waiting for traffic to clear so you can _leave_ the costco
- you have to pay to get in
- and then you have to pay extra to jump to the head of the line
- fights over rare stock like pokemon cards
It's entirely a unrelated subculture going insane about pumping up the prices of pieces of cardboard, and 30's-ish adults who never grew up mentally but now have disposable income.
Normal people buy whatever packs for the kids who proceed to play the game completely wrong.
Fortunately you're a good contributor generally, so this should be easy to fix. We'd appreciate it.
Costco bakery muffins are HUGE. If they're smaller now than they used to be, I'd argue maybe that's a good thing.
> They’re always in far-off places
My Costco is only about 1 1/2 miles away. Literally walked there for lunch once.
> the building, an aircraft hangar–size warehouse spectacle operated very much in line with casino design: a place with no outside source of light
Odd, the author mentions living in Portland, and every Costco in the Portland metro area has skylights.
That's yet another thinly disguised case of punching down: the author wants you to know that they are not the type of person who lives close to a Costco, typically in the suburbs. This author's attitude is so tiresome.
Maybe the East coast bakery just can't compete, but I find time and time again I want to buy something yummy and can't find anything that is worth it.
- No aisle signs or labels anywhere. I understand the retail strategy here but the lack of efficiency in MY experience kills me. Clearly they can't move the bakery, or meat department. But after ~5 visits I still have no idea where some basic products can be found.
- Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?
- I continually make the mistake of going during the weekend when it is the most packed store on Earth. There were no less than 3 Cybertrucks in the parking lot.
I don't have the "must-buy" item yet, but every time I go, I feel like I need to take a nap after.
I saw someone leaving buc-ees at 10:30pm who just purchased a huge fire pit and was franticly trying to jam it in the back of a large chevy. I can only imagine they went for stacks due to the poor planning
If I want to make tacos tonight, and I try to shop for that at Costco, I'm making tacos for a week or more. There's no small size of anything, which is the entire point.
I cannot fathom the people who do weekly or so grocery shopping there. How can you possibly plan out a months worth of pantry for a family like that? It's a skill I certainly don't have but families did for millennia when running small farms and such. Maybe the Navy could teach me how.
For things that are acceptable, it’s usually hard to beat Costco. You have to give up variety, possibly brand choice, and maybe even buy more than you’ll use, but it works out to be significantly cheaper. There are categories, however, where Costco is never the cheapest (soft drinks) or where the commodity store brand is significantly worse than alternatives (batteries).
Kirkland batteries actually last longer than Duracell. They're some of the best alkaline batteries you can get, especially considering the price. Sure, lithium batteries will last longer, but the mAh per dollar is lower, so they'll still cost more.
I don't use a lot of AA/AAA batteries, so I'll buy a pack from Costco and it'll sit in my drawer for 5+ years without issue. They go into a TV remote or bathroom scale or whatever and last a couple years with no issue.
Not leaking is part of the point, but it's definitely not the only point. Alkaline batteries have half the capacity (roughly) compared to lithium cells. They also have lower voltages over time vs. lithium cells and are capable of less current. For certain applications (high current draw intermittent, or long life low current) they excel, and leaking isn't really part of that conversation.
If you're comparing alkaline to alkaline, it's simply not true. The two videos I linked showed people testing it.
> Also the point of lithium batteries is that they don't leak, not that they last longer.
Well, they DO last longer by a significant margin. Again, this was tested in the second video I linked. The description in the video has a link to the spreadsheet of their data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KwTt0lu7_aytity4IE3S...
Kirkland Alkaline was on par with the Rayovac Fusion+ and Duracell Powerboost. Only Rayovac Fusion was noticeably better (oddly, the non-plus version was better), and even then, it's not significantly better considering the price.
In terms of dollars per mAh, Kirkland is #2, only behind AmazonBasics.
24 pack of v8 Energy Drinks are super cheap at Costco, usually $13.49 versus $17+ at other retailers.
I’ve long since stopped worrying about saving a couple bucks per case while timing deals and simply buy from Costco instead. The couple bucks a month it runs me is worth not worrying about the mental overhead.
What are you having trouble finding, out of curiosity? In my Costco everything is pretty much in the same general area. They might move stuff a little bit, but it's pretty consistent.
> Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?
I see this as separate trips for the larger items. Nobody is buying appliances either when you buy meat or paper towels. Also, Costco never fully replaces a full grocery store in my experience. You just don't need things in the sizes they sell them for many goods. Certain foodstuffs are really designed for restaurants and not people. Like, who is buying the 40 lb bags of flour besides people VERY into baking or restaurants?
1. appliances/bedding/toothbrushes 2. alcohol 3. refrigerated foods with the bakery/meat department 4. cleaning products and flats of drinks 5. dry foods
when this cycle is broken or changed in a different Costco I am visiting, I feel VERY lost
Five employees couldn't find the macarons (I found them next to the raw chicken!?)
The snack bars are being moved around. Now some of the ones we buy are with the toothpaste!?
My wife asks me to pick up some sort of caffeine product. There's three spots they could be in she tells me to look. Sometimes that doesn't work either.
We're considering cancelling. We don't drive much and our vehicles are electric. Not a lot of extra money for their vacation packages.
This is in food grade air tight sealed buckets so ymmv.
Also, most flour lasts well past the 12 month expiration just fine. Barely a need to freeze it.
And the worst part is, I regret it. We need a greenhouse now and greenhouse prices are through the roof! I can't afford NOT to impulse buy a greenhouse at Costco 18 months ago now! I'll never make that mistake again.
I think I've gotten the hang of it fairly well. Coffee is over by the coolers but not in them, cat little is on the back wall, specialty cheese is near the meat, Kirland cheese is near the end of one of the coolers, cheap winter jackets are somewhere in the middle between the pants and the tortilla chips, motor oil is at the far right, bread on the left near the old people, and the big expensive life-optional stuff is at the front.
Everything else is either on the way between those points, or it doesn't exist today (because even if it is there, I'll never find it).
Seems good enough for now.
But 5% cash back on ($70*52=)$3640 means I get $182/yr by default back to cover the $130 annual cost of the executive membership. Doesn't sound like a good deal until you also factor in that their fuel is typically 10 cents a gallon or more cheaper than the next least expensive fuel place, which means that for my roughly 650 gallons of fuel a year baseline costco gas saves me an additional $65.
So yeah, nothing really amazing, but the fact that having the membership lets me pocket something in the neighborhood of $120/yr on top of the occasional shopping trip and access is nice.
My takeaway is at certain income level and lifestyle, one can have all memberships but don't find use of any.
Who's buying groceries while kayak shopping? The point is if you want to buy something, you can go to CostCo. The thing you want might be groceries, but sometimes people want other things.
It's not the kind of place where you go in with a shopping list, make point-to-point pickups and then checkout.
I'll join on an occasional trip if I feel like it's a chicken month, but ultimately it seems like a place designed to make it as easy as possible to spend more than I normally would on large amounts of mediocre or bad food and products. It's not remotely a natural optimization of my normal buying habits.
Ironically, I do have a must buy item though, which is the plush blankets.
It makes way more sense to me to just always have a backpack and pick up a few items at a time from smaller shops or other chains, and pay to live closer to these places
Sent me to the shelf, but one has to appreciate the word choice. Evokes the peanut oil spilling everywhere, the reach for geologic terminology captures the lithic aspects of the peanut butter underneath.
I want to live like Costco people because apparently they don't work in the middle of the day!
I think the same thing when a majority of businesses are primarily open 9-5 when they are consumer facing. I have to assume most consumers need hours on evenings and weekends, but I guess it all works out.
I suppose a decent number of people work on the weekend have have varying days off during the week and there are those who don't work for one reason or another (retirees, people with disabilities, single-income homes with more than a single person, vacation days, etc). I guess that all adds up.
The return policy also takes away a lot of concern. If you don't like it you can easily just take it back without any hassle.
And the slices are huge also.
And most people probably get a 32oz cup of sugar water with them.
Maybe I'm overestimating.
I did look up the calorie count for both. 550-ish for the hotdog, 650-ish for the pizza.
Eating a hot dog and a slice, or two slices, and I won't be hungry...for an hour or two.
...I need to get a doctor and ask about a GLP-1.
When I shop early I salute the people having breakfast in the food court. One afternoon I saw people at a table with an empty rotisserie chicken package, hittin' their macros. I had my baby with me one time, offering him bites of my hotdog and being praised for being a man spending time with my child as if I had vaccinated a needy village.
I don't feel the need to demonstrate my unique personality through where I buy groceries.
Unfortunately, it sounds like the article's author is only on their first step of this realization.
—Death Cab for Cutie
... which often mirrors my feelings in Costco, particularly near the registers, where oftentimes in my local stores it feels more akin to the Thunderdome.
And then Disco 2000 was written about Deborah Bone, childhood friend who was a mental health nurse (who helped form Step2 and created the Brainbox), and said the only thing inaccurate about the song was that her home did not have "woodchips on the wall". She said, shortly before she died of myeloma, that she "did grow up and sleep with Jarvis Cocker, somebody had to, and it was perfectly innocent" (I think the implication is that they fell asleep together).
Not of any great relevance. I just see myself as a collector of information that might only be useful for music trivia nights...
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life (via The Mirror), Cocker addressed claims that the inspiration was Danae Stratou, a Greek woman who attended St Martin’s at the same time as Jarvis, but confirmed that “it wasn’t her because she had blonde hair and the girl had dark hair.”
https://www.nme.com/news/music/jarvis-cocker-is-on-a-quest-t...
If we're dropping random trivia it should probably be mentioned that her husband is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis
In big adventure RPG games there’s always some kind of shop in every new area that is the same inside everywhere that you can reliably go to for whatever gear you need, to heal, to save your game, whatever. Costco is that but in real life.
Gas line. Nightmare parking lot to get in and out of. Long walk to the store. Long walk to find anything. Slow checkout.
I guess narrowing it to "cheap gas, availability of familiar goods and bathrooms, with an on-site tire shop" helps make it make a _bit_ more sense, but the (lack of) speed would just be a deal-killer for me.
I cannot recommend Kirkland Natural Creamy Peanut Butter highly enough. Ingredients: 100% roasted Valencia peanuts. Sold as a package of two 1kg jars.
My biggest complaint has always been the enormous size of perishable items. Yes, you can buy a 10 lb bag of apples for much less than other stores; but does it really save you if almost half of it goes bad before you eat it all.
Even when my four always-hungry children lived at home, we had trouble consuming many things we bought. I always thought that Costco would make a killing if they broke up their fruit bags and assembled assorted fruit baskets to sell. Buy 10 lbs, but get it as a mix of apples, oranges, grapes, and lemons.
Also cut their chocolate cakes in half. They would sell more than twice as many.
Yes, many things are slightly - a few percent - cheaper than many other stores, per unit weight/volume, but it’s not a a big difference. Some things are more expensive though, like meat and fish. It seems “cheap” only if you do most of your other grocery shopping in premium grocery stores (eg Whole Foods). I do most of my grocery shopping in Market Basket, and it’s about the same as Costco for most things I buy. And everything comes in normal sized portions!
Costco’s real benefit is that everything they sell is pretty good stuff, and nothing is outrageously overpriced. Eg They sell Goya beans, for more per can than supermarket brand beans, but less than Goya beans in supermarkets. Many things are like this. You can assume that the things Costco sells are The Good Brands, but you can get most things cheaper if you’re not brand sensitive.
There are many things for which buying in bulk is a false economy: I will *ever again buy Costco-sized containers of eg yogurt covered raisins, or praline covered almonds! I suspect that every trip to Costco used to raise my average body weight for the next year by half a pound. Especially if I went to Costco hungry! Never go to Costco hungry!
I buy 95% of my food and most of my household items from Costco. I will blindly buy any item without reading reviews. Out of thousands of purchases I can count the failures on one hand.
Many ridicule Costco for being excessive. But frugal buyers can produce great value out of 25 lbs of flour, 10 lb bags of rice and so on. With proper home economics you can still eat like a king on a lower-middle-class budget. I'm very proud of the nutritious and luxurious meals I produce with what most people are paying for Doritos & Mountain Dew.
I will never live out of reach of a Costco. It's the second most important factor when I live somewhere.
"every Costco shopper has a certain item or two they’re compelled to purchase on each visit"
Organic, single-serving guacamole and Magic Spoon cereal for me.
My toddler is obsessed with their mammoth two dollar slices of cheese pizza and talks constantly about wanting to go to Costco to have pizza with his little bestie.
They've made some deliberate decisions to make it family friendly:
1. The aisles are wide so the whole family can walk through the store together.
2. The kids love free samples
3. The food court is a great place to have an inexepensive dinner.
4. The store is designed so there's nothing really to grab at ground level if you're a little kid. Everything is up higher.
Contrast this with a standard grocery store: small aisles and tons of little things on the shelf at ground level (including random toys) that can get grabbed or knocked over. Every time I take my family to Albertsons I have to pick a dozen things off the ground that we accidentally knocked off.
You can pry the 2-lb bags of Mayorga Cafe Cubano dark roast coffee from my cold, dead hands.
When I'm at Costco for other stuff I might buy some produce, though. It depends on what they've got today, the status of what they have (produce quality can vary quite a lot from day-to-day in any given store), and whether I expect to be able to use all of it before it becomes gross.
Mostly what I come home from Costco with is multipacks of [household-sized] canned goods, cheese (which keeps fine in the fridge), meat (to be frozen), and onions (big bag == big onions). Oh, and cat food and kitty litter. Canned V8 juice also comes from Costco at a fraction of grocery store prices. Their OTC medicine is cheap, which is important for stuff I take every day (yay pollen!). These are all things that I will use, and which I save a good deal of money on.
They don't have everything. Often, they very distinctly do not have what I want. If I go there expecting to find a particular flavor of dish detergent or canned salsa, I will probably be disappointed.
What they do have tends to be a very attractive combination of quality and price. Those purchases are successes.
These little successes feel better than getting shafted over and over again by Kroger.
Whole Foods: eye-bogglingly expensive (and no, I don't think it always was)
Wegmans: substantially more expensive than a few years ago, and a noticeable decline in produce quality
Trader Joes: incredible value on many prepared foods, but not the best source for staples like rice or paper products.
Costco is not inflation-proof by any means but they have pretty much 0 margins and they're reliably the best value on just about whatever they sell. The selection can be limited in some ways compared to a supermarket, and they can be a bad place to be health conscious (as it can be hard to resist massive containers of ultra cheap and delicious treats of various kinds) or to try to try to be an ethical consumer (and please spare me the HN cynical line on this, I get it, I have no real agency and I'm pathetically guilt-ridden): I've read bad things about their meat sourcing, they rarely have coffee with bona fides like fair trade or shade grown, I see controversial products like bird's nest soup, etc.
Agree their prices have gone up in general though.
IMO H-Mart is the safest bet in the Boston area for high quality produce (outside of farmers markets, natch)
https://www.costco.com/p/-/kirkland-signature-organic-ethiop...
https://www.costco.com/p/-/mayorga-buenos-das-usda-organic-l...
I have no idea why do they not sell these(light roast) ones in warehouses.
I get my beans for my summer cold brew at Costco, but my typical pour over beans elsewhere.
As a household of 1, it just doesn't make sense to buy that much of most things, unless I'm sure they're almost entirely non-perishable. Maybe it would be fine for my cereal or something, but not a lot of what I buy. And, by design, they limit their SKUs a fair amount.
So ultimately I end up in a situation where I can buy a couple things at Costco, but then still need to do regular grocery trips.
Now I need to drive to 2 separate stores, which is extra trips there and back.
The math just didn't work out. If I could truly do 100% of my grocery shopping there I would.
These past 2 years it has gotten significantly worse. Too crowded. Too many people who have no common decency of not blocking the lane. And way way way too many instacart delivery people FLOORING IT to get their next item pickup and leave. Looking at their phone and bumping into people/stuff. I don't like the vibes.
The one cool thing they have now is the 9am executive hours where you can go in earlier than normal. That feels more like the costco of 2016 to me.
I have a large family, so we buy almost everything at Costco.
When I was kid I was so mortified when my parents suggested to buy clothes at Costco.
Now I think half my clothes come from Costco.
But yes, you can buy many different items there. Many come in large packages. The public can be found there shopping too. You are not required to purchase every item. Welcome to the 90s and holy shit thanks for the journalism.
I let my Costco membership lapse because it's cheaper, healthier and more pleasant to buy 1) small quantities, of 2) fresh foods, in a 3) nice store, that is preferably 4) nearby, and 5) quietly forget to buy all the other crap you don't need.
Niles: I've already secured six cases! They're over there, just between the Kirkland Signature Leaf Blowers and the 5 pound bags of "Kickin' Queso Jalapeño Poppers"!
Martin: Oh I LOVE those, where?
For some reason my wife likes taking more time there than other places we shop for food, and I get anxious to get it over with. You can bet most of the times I wander off to get things off our list that she's herself wandered off, and the Costco we go to doesn't have good cell coverage. So I then end up both anxious about spending all day shopping, and annoyed that I can't find my wife.
I am sure I'm not the only one. I try to go alone, or stay in the car this happens so often.
Importantly, I am not blaming Costco for my Costco problem.
When she is encumbered with navigating the cart, it's quite easy to stay nearby as all her movements have to be more considered. This also generally restricts her to the same lumbering speed as all the other carts in the store.
I don't know what Costco parking lots in the PNW are like but in the NE, they're a nightmare. People racing around, lining up and jockeying for spots, enormous carts careening around and being left ... wherever because people can't be bothered to put them back. My family has a membership but I permanently opted out after one trip to the Danbury, CT location.
> otherwise you are rarely confronted by the staff here, and I like that.
That is, until they try to stop you from leaving the store with your property until you show them a receipt.
I live near, and commute by, one of the PNW Costcos in the PDX area the author explicitly references. I can confirm that just the mere sight of the parking lot, at all hours, has been the primary factor in my refusing to get a membership. Plenty of friends and family I trust love Costco, and I'm sure they're right and that I'd find lots to appreciate, but that damn parking lot madness is such a hump for me to get over.
FWIW, I'm referring to the Beaverton Costco right next to Nike.
The accountholder is required to show it, It is in Costco's terms and conditions.
I also don't like the door check 'game.' Additionally, being hounded at checkout to upgrade your plan while juggling a 5 year old, dealing with payment, and a line full of people behind you is not enjoyable.
(1)https://boardwalkpuzzles.com/products/costco-treasure-hunt-1...
> Contrapuntal to the list of things we must buy on each visit, there is perhaps a more controversial list.
That's... a very strange application of the word. I’ve only ever seen it used in the context of baroque music, interchangeable with the idea of counterpoint referring to independent melodic lines in a piece, such as you would see in Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. Using it here feels forced and out of place.
I happily pay more at places like Publix to -not- have to do that.
> there were hordes of people standing lifelessly in a huge line waiting to check themselves out
Where are the retail experiences where people waiting to checkout are expressing an abundance of joy in life to you? Is the problem the “horde”? Sure, popular places tend to have a lot of people. I’m not sure why Costco customers act way less fun to you than at other places? This whole comments reads like a petulant “everyone is a NPC but me” screed
I love Wegmans for most groceries but their checkouts seem to be getting worse.
Publix' pricing is obscene though.
Also, this may be my own bias coloring my perception but there was a palpable undertone among some of the shoppers of “at least we’re not Walmart customers”.
I’m sure quite a few Costco members enjoy the treasure hunt model they offer but I’d much rather have an option to order online and go pick up what I need or, failing that, labeled aisles.
To Costco’s credit, though, they refunded my membership fee in full as soon as I asked to cancel. And their return policy the one time I had to use it was exceptional as well. It’s a shame the rest of the experience has to be such a sensory overload.
Whoever told you to go at noon on a weekday was pulling your leg. That's when all the peeps with jobs go to shop and get a quick lunch on their lunch break. It's always packed then.
At open on a weekday is usually pretty good, but 30 minutes after open might be better (if you've got the executive membership with an exclusive hour, then be sure to go then). Never go on the weekend, unless maybe 30 minutes before closing, if you know what you want and where it is. Or you can probably go during the super bowl, but not before or after. Double don't go on the weekend before a weekday holiday.
Is it just for like catering companies or families of 20 where the bigger size is kind of helpful?
They do some nice discounts on Macs online though (can't say I'm a fan of their customer service either though based on my experience returning a Macbook)
That is one area where I think they're starting to crack down, here, thanks to abuse. My ex- returned a glass-topped sit stand desk after 5 years, when she finished her degree, for a full refund. "Anything wrong with it?" "No." "Any reason you're returning it?" "Just don't like it now." "Okay, here you go".
And her mom, who would buy a Keurig, drink all the sample pods it came with (24-30 or so), and then return it to get a new one (and new sample pods), which blew my mind, what a pain in the ass, for that, not to mention...
I just returned it within a a few days, exercising my legal rights when purchasing an item over the internet. I wasn't that impressed with the device for the money having had the opportunity to demo it
The UK has almost nowhere that would accept a return for a refund after 5 years after having rented it for free.
You can barely exercise your legal rights when something breaks at year 5 of 6 (because of the burden of proof is on you that it was a manufacturing defect)
Look at Richie Rich paying $200 plus prorated membership for his subsidence calories (in white rice, no less, which is a premium starch in some Asian countries)…
I can't imagine you could buy a pie of that shit to take home.
They were talking about how they were admiring all the services offered to members, and said they considered buying a cruise vacation package, but then immediately realized “we’d just be on the ship with people from Costco”
Notice how almost no one goes to Costco alone, and contrast it with the supermarket, where most people now go alone.
Costco is a theme park. So is Ikea.
||tastecooking.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/*.gif
If I'm grabbing an item or two and they haven't been moved I can be in and out in under 10 minutes.
Lethbridge AB, some of these other ones sound like an adventure.
Back in the Pepsi days there were always free cups around from people that didn't like Pepsi. Now - nada.
-- this is me. I am seen.
Stay repeat indulge enjoy
Aesthetically-minded hipster writes a think piece on reluctantly aging out of high school fears of being "uncool," finally grows up and has a family, but 15 years too late.
Discovers the concept of economies of scale and also that families in the center of the country who spend their weekends at Costco instead of marching at pride events might not be nazis after all...and actually it's kind of convenient to go to a big warehouse full of curated bulk items and buy shit when you have kids.
I imagine its exactly the type of thing boomer hippies (the hipsters of their generation) wrote about in the 80s/90s after they realized dropping acid in nudist drum circles gets old after a while and that communes don't actually work. Just rewrite the title to "I want to live like Kmart people," and voila, you've got a New Yorker thinkpiece from 1986.
Because simply asking to see what it sells requires me to subscribe upfront.
It's not like I cannot buy without a membership card; that is perfectly understandable. But I cannot even see what's sold inside, which prevents me from knowing if I actually want to become a member. They do have a "catalogue" of sorts... showing the prices of about 30 products or so. That's all. And the website describing the general aisles, with a few pictures.
So, they want me to subscribe to something before I can even see what they have to offer? What the heck is with that?
On the other hand, you can just walk straight to the food court and buy pizza, soda, and cookies, without being a member.
Is this how things work in the US as well? If so, how is that justified?
Much of my wardrobe is from CostCo, effective suburban camouflage as well as being fine as clothes.
I can't think of another clothing retailer that has garments right there in front of you that you can touch and hold up to your body, the experience is far superior to just looking at photos.
"Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me." -> What even is this? Get over yourself.
Remember that the CEO of Costco wears his name tag to work, and eats the Costco hotdog like everyone else. I'd buy that for a dollar!
Alternatively elsewhere, small shops, many locally owned, butchers, vendors convenience stores replace the existence of 'costco'
In these facts, I dont know if its necessarily a bad thing, but there is something empty, soulless and anti social about it.
Maybe a few grape tomatoes for thought between the world salad of this article, "cognitive pattern. It is a jarring thoughtscape, remarkably compelling and nondiscursive and utterly hard to shake." - That is what the author too is getting at?
Or you just order from Costco as one more store on Instacart or similar, and don't make it part of your identity.
I have memories of a Costco similar to the author's, but I have no desire to ever go to a store again if I can help it.
Guys. Its a supermarket with a monthly fee. Based on your monthly expenses it might or might not be worthwhile to shop there. That's about all the philosophizing there is about it.
If what food you buy is "brands", it's shit to begin with. Just that some of it is more expensive shit.
If you want to be uppity about it, buy mostly local, fresh produce and meats, not packaged brands, as much as you can.
> And this is where we wait together, regardless of our age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.
It’s not out of snobbishness, their quality is excellent at excellent prices.
My problem is that I find I spend more at Costco than at conventional grocery stores like Trader Joe’s.
The paradox is, it’s cheaper, but I spend more. I buy things I wouldn’t normally buy, and ant higher quantities. Even worse, I somehow eat it all quite quickly.
I spend more and eat more when I shop at Costco.
Unfortunately that’s neither healthy for my wallet nor for my waistline.
reducing the experience to “settling into the drudgery of middle age” scream more of a reflection of OP than any costco normal shopper
Their staff felt a bit cultish, but they were always pretty friendly and helpful so from a customer perspective it was nice.
I tried Costco once and everything was too big. By the time we got to the end of anything we were absolutely sick of it.
There are no Costco people. There are no Whole Foods people. There are no Gus’s people. In San Francisco, I live a block from Whole Foods, a block from Safeway and a block past that is Gus’s. Costco is six blocks away. We go to all of these places at various times. My gym is near Gus’s. Whole Foods has the biggest selection. Safeway has Envy apples. Costco is where we get the base load of stuff when we do weekly shopping.
As commentary on consumerism has filtered down from philosophy to the masses it really has become incredibly middle-brow. Copy-paste opinions about shopping substitute for any intellectual examination of food availability. Like LLM text the language is sound but the ideas are incredibly shallow shadows of the ultimate concept.
It really brings home the idea that if you can’t appreciate living in an era of abundance where fruit of high quality is available throughout the year and it has been bred to high perfection and eggs, milk, and rice are practically costless compared to the past, that perhaps there is nothing that can bring you joy. All the “this is late stage capitalism where you consume consume consume without thought and reason” takes have the shape of meaning but carry nothing. They’re some kind of cargo cult mimicry of some concept.
We have solved food. Costco is the solved form. $2.99/lb of chicken.
I think where you shop and what kind of products you buy says a lot about you. For example - I have two friend groups that sometimes meet up for drinks. One group drinks craft beer, fancy wine, etc. The other drinks relatively inexpensive beers and chu-hi. The experience in the two groups is completely different - everything from the conversation topics, manners, ideals, hobbies, how much people drink and for how long, etc. In both groups I have seen someone mention that they shop at a certain store, and elicit surprise from the other group members.
> In San Francisco, I live a block from Whole Foods, a block from Safeway and a block past that is Gus’s. Costco is six blocks away. We go to all of these places at various times. My gym is near Gus’s. Whole Foods has the biggest selection. Safeway has Envy apples. Costco is where we get the base load of stuff when we do weekly shopping.
I actually think this says quite a bit more about you than you may think. I can probably guess which way you vote, for instance, and where you stand on a range of social issues. I can probably guess how much income you earn, and whether you have a college degree. I may be wrong - we're dealing with probabilities after all - but demographics are real.