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Comment by yabones | Hacker News Reader

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner.

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.

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Trader Joe's is probably closest to what you want. It targets single shoppers with small quantities and low prices, and it rotates products frequently to keep things interesting.

Anecdotally I feel like a lot of TJ's shoppers shift into Costco shoppers as they age up.

The nice thing about Trader Joe's is that you can be in and out in 5-10 minutes if you're just buying weekly food items. The store is modestly sized and the checkout lines are short. I'm in there about once a week.

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.

at what volume is the membership worth it?

4 shops/year I wouldn't have thought would justify the cost

We only shop regularly at three stores: Costco (every 2 weeks), TJs (random stuff that we don't need as much of or that is cheaper/better at TJs, like organic peanut butter, or sometimes their cheeses and marinated meats, oh, and the kids love TJ takis, also wine), and our local grocer (makes fresh bread daily, and we get meat, milk and eggs there because they source locally).

I'm reminded of a comedian's bit I heard recently (he does a lot of "crowd work")

> 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 it varies by location, but in my experience, Whole Foods is significantly more expensive than Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is pretty affordable. It may not be Walmart cheap, but it's no worse than Target.

My wife and I shop at both Costco and TJs. They are our favorite stores...

We're a bit odd though. Highly budget conscious, 4 kidsto feed (including 2 teenagers), and European tastes in food.

I don't think this is abnormal. I think every family in my (middle class+) neighborhood does both Costco and Trader Joes. We don't have a convenient Whole Foods though.

Or vice versa as kids move out and you don't need all that food. We will shop at Costco monthly but TJ is way more common.

The basic membership is $65. If all you do is get a year's worth of detergent, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies chances are that will already pay for the membership. They also have grocery items that are kinda wholesale but not really. Pantry stuff like a bag of nuts that you can go through on your own in under a week that is marked down significantly from the grocery store. Oh also olive oil is another big one for me.

The issue for many apartment-dwellers is storage. You can't store a year's worth of detergent, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies in an apartment.

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.

Yes I'm cognizant of that. Not everything I get there is a large item. The dishwasher detergent for example goes under the sink. Bulk is basically a two pack. Coffee also just throw it in the pantry. Ditto for other drinks and food items. And electronics. I've gotten a MacBook air from Costco only for the extended warranty they offer. Another perk is free installs which I guess doesn't apply for apartment folks but I will say I got a dishwasher from them and the install being included was on it's own worth the price.

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.

Is it a requirement in Hawaii because of the generally high prices of everything there?

It's just nice to have cause of the gas price discount and the fact that a lot of the product in US big box stores is sold at relatively sane prices with shipping and handling taken care of.

We live in a smaller place and my wife and I just piggyback off friends and end up going roughly once a quarter as well. We do have enough space for a year's worth of toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc but even then it's often not worth the hassle of driving (we live in an urban enough area that we don't drive often), parking, fighting through lines, etc just to get stuff once a quarter.

>The basic membership is $65. If all you do is get a year's worth of detergent, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies chances are that will already pay for the membership.

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.

Depending on how close/far your Costco is, it could be worth it for fuel savings alone. They're generally $0.15-$0.30 / gallon cheaper than nearby gas stations. I've seen it as much as $0.60 / gallon cheaper on occasion. On top of that, their gas is Top Tier.

you could get the annual supply, then cancel your membership and get the membership refund. then repeat next year. Its within their rules.

Seems like quite a pain in the ass to save the equivalent of $7/month. If you value your time at all it's barely worth it.

The simpler variant of this is to obtain a gift certificate. They are required to let you spend it it, so you can get into the store that way. Bring cash, though -- they don't love that people do this, so they don't always take credit cards on these transactions.

If you ever visit Japan, you can buy a Costco membership there for $35 and use it in the US.

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.)

If you do most of your grocery shopping there like me, you can get the executive membership which gives you 2% cash back on everything at the end of the year which for me makes the membership completely free. Pay with the Costco credit card and you get an additional 2%.

to me this erodes trust in the Costco brand, they should've put these back in the prices, as this suggests everyone else are paying extra 4%

I’d rather just pay a bit more at Target and not even have to go inside, they bring your order out to your car for free.

For the kinds of people who post on HN, the real savings of a Costco membership is that they regularly have high-end electronics, appliances, and home furnishings at $50-100 or more off retail elsewhere. Get a robot vacuum or a couch or a VR headset for $100 off and your membership's already paid for itself that year. For several years, if you need to replace a refrigerator or washing machine.

> Get a robot vacuum or a couch or a VR headset for $100 off and your membership's already paid for itself that year

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.

> 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.

That sounds like you might well be spending more time than the money you're saving.

Paired with a costco credit card it usually pays for itself.

There was a point where two friends and I each lived alone in an apartment, and I was the only one who had a (2-door) car. We still occasionally did Costco runs.

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.

Growing up as a kid, we lived in the sticks and the small local grocery store had a limited produce section. My mom joined a little co-op where each person would put in the same amount of cash, but one person would make a trip to the downtown farmer's market. The purchase was split evenly between each member. Each trip a different person made the trip so the variety changed not only by what was available but by the person making the trip's preferences.

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.

This is what I did with 3 roommates in college. We saved a ton of money that way.

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.

Eggs last a long time in the fridge! I could definitely go through 36 eggs myself over the course of 3 weeks. :)

Actual conversation with a roommate from that time:

"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.

Some stuff like milk is a nonstarter. But most everything else I will go to costco for even living in a small apartment. Big costco thing of olive oil is far cheaper than olive oil anywhere else and not too hard to store. pack of trash bags again easy to store cheaper than anywhere else. likewise for dish soap, just as wide as a standard bottle but square and far cheaper. A lot of stuff with longer shelf lifes that I eat anyway in maybe 1.5-2x the volume as sold in a regular grocery stores and works out to be cheaper still somehow than that smaller volume unit at the regular grocery store. Cereal. Oats. I will even get my creatine there. My rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. My generic allergy medicine and psuedoephedrine (which is a RACKET at CVS by the way). There's been times I've had some baking in front of me and 24 rack of eggs made sense. I also get their golf balls and golf gloves. Cheap zinc sunscreen.

TJs has 1L EVOO for about $12, and was cheaper before the inflation.

> 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.

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.

> the 8 oz will be on sale but only if you buy at least 2 or 3, its incredibly frustrating.

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.

My grocery store does both. If the label says "Sale: 2/$5, Was: $3.99" and I buy one, I get charged $2.50. If the label says "2/$5, Single item: $3" and I buy one, I get charged $3.

Most likely that pricing rule was/is at a more local level. The national level in the US doesn't have anything like that, but there are some states or cities or counties that can and do.

iirc yes it did not apply on purchase as well, on the label it is always also explicit about cost if not bought in those quantities(2 for 5 in any quantity is still sometimes the actual offering). I am assuming my memory is correct because its baked into my shopping experience to ensure i am reading the label correctly now.

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.

At my Winn Dixie and Publix (FL), tags often say "must by in quantities of 2." for products on sale.

The computers are not dumb. If you do not purchase the correct number of items, the discount is not applied. Also, if you do not have a member/loyalty account, you do not get those discounts. They now have a new level that requires you to have their app for "digital" coupons that are on top of the loyalty prices. There are many times where I don't input my number in until the very end, and then see it calculate all of the deductions. Sometimes it's not much, but I've seen it drop $30 from the "member" price discounts.

> The computers are not dumb.

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.

> 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.

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.

> That's not a special,

It is a special when the usual price is $2 each.

> Why not?

Because I'm not interested.

Counterpoint: Publix will absolutely show a special price of "2 for X" and will charge you X/2 if you only buy one. I did it just this morning.

> 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.

No, WTF? That's not a thing, why would you even credit such obvious nonsense?

The thing is you can save a ton of money on a few non-food items to make it worth it. Just over-the-counter medicines save me a huge chunk of the membership fee. Then there are just random household goods: paper products, trash bags, dishwasher detergent, etc.

Their pharmacy is A+.

I get my dogs seizure meds there and they're about $10 a month but at a regular pharmacy they'd be $300+.

You can use the pharmacy without a membership.

Renting a car once a year through Costco Travel is worth the membership fee.

I've been seeing more and more of these "weird" membership perks. I had not seen the car rental until now. I've seen the vacations and other home repair/upgrade things. I'm in a perpetual disagreement with Enterprise that makes them not allow me to rent a car from them or their sub-brands (which is most of them now it seems). I might check into Costco's offerings for this summer. Thanks for the reminder.

It's great for canned goods and anything bulk for cooking, see: salmon.

We've been buying their "fresh" salmon (not freeze-packed) for years, until parasites started crawling out of one fillet. Statistically nothing, but the wife will never buy it again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Glasses is another place where the savings are astounding

I've been doing most of my grocery shopping at Costco for more than 20 years and I still don't understand this claim. I'm only shopping for my wife and I. I have a normal sized house, normal sized pantry, normal sized car. I just don't buy things in bulk that I can't use before they spoil and I freeze all meats. Most things at Costco are barely larger than standard size. You can buy a single gallon of milk, a single quart of creamer, 18 eggs, etc. It's never once been a problem. I fill in smaller things from Aldi (like if I need a bottle of mustard). I have plenty of variety - I'm buying raw ingredients and can make a wide variety of things from them.

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.

house

Yeah bodegas and specialty grocery stores are for this and tend to be frequent in dense or HCOL areas in the US. We shop at one (also because we're food snobs and cook a lot, so we strongly prefer not getting the "Costco basics" version of our staples) for most things and likewise shop roughly weekly.

Not sure if there's anything preventing this from happening in North America but in Japan there are stores that literally just sold broken down bulk items bought at Costco.

If you're willing to drive far and are in the western US, I highly recommend WinCo foods as a place to buy all your "normal" foods in individual units for very low prices no membership required. Theyre outside the center city usually.

sounds like you just want to live in europe (or probably anywhere outside of the US?). You can typically go buy a half (or quarter) loaf of bread from a baker, and street markets let you buy all the small quantities you want by the kilo

One of the few things I miss about living in Charlotte a few years back, it's the brand spanking new Lidl stores that popped up. Like mini Costcos' with decent pricing. Bright and cheery. I must've gone there daily, not least for exploring the middle mystery isle. There were Aldis' too, but they were 2 tiers below Lidl. I've been to both chains in Germany and Aldi and Lidl seemed on par there.

You can even buy half a baguette from a baker in France lol (They're already relatively small!). Love it - great for single people.

I'm sorry you can't find a 2x2 foot space for extra food storage.

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.

I think trader joe's is what people i know do for small curated quantities. They know what they're doing.

The shoppers there might still be the same costco members though :)

I think you’re describing Trader Joe’s for something at the giant chain level.

Trader Joes, Whole Foods, ALDI, Sprouts.

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