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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Also the reason that small specialty shops, and mom-and-pop grocery, fruit, dairy, bakeries and butcher shops are largely gone. They just cannot compete with Costco and Sam's Club/Walmart's buying power.

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A specialty shop can probably survive Costco much more easily than they can survive Walmart or any other conventional (American) grocery store. The grocery store carries 20 or 30 different olive oils, to select one example. Odds are all the snobbiest will find something they like... odds are even decent that in a blind taste test even the snobbiest would find something that they would be horrified to discover came from a normal grocery store.

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.

Costco is for bulk staples and commodities for me. Products that I really don't need the best of the best for, good enough is good enough and as long as I can use it all before it goes bad, I'd rather not waste more thought than needed for it. Milk, eggs, flour, flowers, microfiber towels, batteries, salt and pepper.

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.

> Costco is for bulk staples and commodities for me

> 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. :-)

Actual specialty shops survive just fine. There's plenty of value in real expertise. Run-of-the-mill stores selling the same commodity at a higher price are simply inefficient.

The idealized small mom-and-pop shops were largely put out of business by WWII and rationing more than anything. Supermarkets and department stores have more or less been the norm in the US since long before Wal-Mart began spreading across the country.

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.

I would argue that corner stores were also driven out of business by suburbanization. If no one is within walking distance to a corner store, then it's not going to survive. Fewer people are going to drive to a corner store that costs more and stocks less than a supermarket.

They mostly exist now in a different form as gas station markets, or in dense urban areas like NYC, or some central business districts.

I will not buy coffee at Costco. I've had Costco coffee beans and it's terrible. I only buy premium beans at specialty shops and always will. The masses can drink their subpar coffee from Costco if they wish.

I remember reading costco has leverage on their supplier-producers, enough that they than enforce better standards above regulation (i.e. meats/produce), which is something mom-pop can't do.

99% of the reason for the mom-and-pop groceries dying out is that "our" Federal Gov't decided that it would stop bothering to enforce the law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act

And note how the modern Democratic Party - the originators of that law back in 1936 - utterly failed to give a crap about the issue.

> note how the modern Democratic Party... 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.

Robinson-Patman is a bad law. Even if it were a good law, it would be effectively impossible to enforce equitably and not capriciously, which is probably why it hasn’t been.

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.

Pre-1980's, it seems to have been enforced well enough to keep a whole lot of mom-and-pop grocery stores in business.

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.

You don’t have to guess. Wikipedia’s cite for the claim of decline says:

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.

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