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Comment by qrush | Hacker News Reader

I just got (at 38) a Costco membership this year, thanks to my in-laws gifting us a membership. There's another huge discount retailer here in Boston (BJs) that I have gone to for years, but Costco is another 10+ min drive away so I've resisted thus far. I will say... I'm still adjusting.

- 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.

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I have talked my wife out of us both nearly impulse-buying a mini greenhouse at Costco multiple times.

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.

Sometimes you just have to trust your Coscto instincts.

And let go of Costco regret.

I got a Costco greenhouse a few years ago, sorry they're overpriced now - I enjoy mine more than I expected and I thought it'd be fun.

I have had to repeatedly talk myself out of buying various greenhouses and sheds from Costco. They'd be so USEFUL darnit!

> 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.

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?

I do agree that Costco's can be laid out pretty differently and I get confused. My home Costco flows in a circle where you first see:

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

The biggest thing I've noticed is a Costco chirality. My home Costco was right-handed (enter on the right, things are in the same order you described, exit on the left), but then I moved and now my local Costco is left-handed (pretty much the same but mirrored, except, for whatever reason, the alcohol, which precedes the perishables rather than succeeding them). Kinda funny.

> What are you having trouble finding, out of curiosity?

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.

Flour lasts basically indefinitely in a deep freezer. I just emptied out the last bits of a bag bought during covid and it was fine.

This is in food grade air tight sealed buckets so ymmv.

Who wants to waste freezer space with 40 lbs of flour? Pretty bad use unless, again, you love baking or don’t have a use for it.

Also, most flour lasts well past the 12 month expiration just fine. Barely a need to freeze it.

Long ago we found that we saved more money shopping at Costco than the membership cost by a long shot. We even get the executive membership because they will refund the difference of you don’t get at least that back rewards (we always have).

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).

> 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.

https://youtu.be/8VumAfhdhAI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ_tGjXm0Ng

It’s probably my own battery hygiene, but I’ve had so many Kirkland batteries leak over the years that I no longer trust them. I still buy batteries at Costco, but haven’t had the same issue with the name brand leaking.

Wild. I wonder what could cause that?

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.

The only time this happens to me is when there is a drain on the battery over a long time, or when you have two cells that don't have matching voltage and the lower one gets over-discharged. I've never had one go bad from sitting in a drawer or a box.

It’s always in a device. Typically low power, long duration (remotes, etc.)

I've actually had a whole pile of Duracell CR2023 batteries from Costco leak inside the packaging. (You can google for various reports/pictures of the problem.)

That has not been my experience at all. I think Kirkland batteries have less capacity than the premium brands. Also the point of lithium batteries is that they don't leak, not that they last longer.

> Also the point of lithium batteries is that they don't leak, not that they last longer.

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.

> I think Kirkland batteries have less capacity than the premium brands

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.

> cheapest (soft drinks)

24 pack of v8 Energy Drinks are super cheap at Costco, usually $13.49 versus $17+ at other retailers.

For standard soda (Coke or Pepsi depending on location) Costco is rarely the cheapest deal at any given time but they are consistently fair. Supermarkets will have regular prices cases at nearly double Costco unit costs, but on sale they are moderately cheaper.

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.

The #1 thing for me at Costco is the gas. I have the credit card, so I get 5% cash back on the first $7,000 of gas I purchase in a year. Being as that, as of now I am spending ~$70/week on fuel, I will not hit the max for the year.

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.

They also use "Top Tier+" gas.

There are so many people like you (who only use it for gas) that they are now building Costco gas stations not attached to a warehouse. Massive stations like the ones near the warehouses.

My first trip to Costco was also fairly recent.

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.

The "correct" way to shop at Costco is to wind through every aisle. They want you to discover what they have - what's new, what's gone, what's on sale, try some samples etc. There are some general anchors like the fridge, the alcohol, the produce section but it's otherwise pretty ephemeral.

It's not the kind of place where you go in with a shopping list, make point-to-point pickups and then checkout.

Ya I don't see the appeal either. Imo it's just a place that takes advantage of suburbanites' love of buying excessive amounts of crap they don't need while simultaneously avoiding the spaces outside their car, work, or home. All the more power to them!

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

> Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?

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.

The American mind must be studied.

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 nobody is buying them, you have to wonder why they are for sale. my guess is someone is buying them

Nah, Costco is so crowded and such long checkout lines. No one buys anything there.

I hate going there. It's so crowded, the lines are massive, and all so you can save like $200 at the end of the year on some groceries. The other problem is that you end up impulse buying well over $200 worth of stuff you wouldn't have purchased if you just went to the regular grocery store. Oh but you have to go to the grocery store anyways after your 2 hour long Costco trip, because the shit they had last week is gone now. But hey at least you waited in line for another 40 minutes to save $3.00 on your tank of gas you bought while you were there.

I have friends who have membership to Costco, Sam's and BJs. And when they need to buy stuff they go to nearest market from home (none of above 3). Despite working from home forever, they just don't have time to go to these warehouse stores.

My takeaway is at certain income level and lifestyle, one can have all memberships but don't find use of any.

It's odd to me thinking people consider Costco a grocery store. I realize they have groceries but that certainly isn't what I use it for.

Half the store is food - it's an excellent grocery store.

It's much closer to a restaurant supply store that happens to be open to normal people.

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.

I'm a single person and I do almost all of my grocery shopping at Costco. I have a normal sized refrigerator, and a well stocked pantry. If you make tacos one night, make dishes the next three nights that use overlapping ingredients...

Really? Even meats? Or drinks?

"It's weird that everyone doesn't behave exactly like me." I believe that's what the kids call main character energy.

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