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?
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 $3–4 billion, but Costco does not publicly break this out as a discrete figure in its financial statements.
In any case, I’m not saying it isn’t a significant source of revenue, I’m saying that “they only make money/they make most of their money from memberships” is a deceptive framing that is oft repeated. It makes it sound like they are selling things at cost when they aren’t. Their margins are in line with the grocery industry as a whole. Their pricing is an effect of low opex and volume. They make most of their profit from selling things. If they didn’t charge for membership they wouldn’t lose money.
You wouldn't starve to death, but you'd absolutely want to supplement (both for more calories and probably for vitamins). But also you'd be eating that rice every single day pretty much, how else are you getting through that much rice?
EDIT: the actual point is that it's probably not literal. Ease of quantifying and transporting dried rice over long distances without refrigeration probably had a lot of how they ended up with a Koku as useful measurement.
don't get me wrong, white rice isn't the worst thing in your diet but i think it's great to diversify with some whole grains and lots of beans (a real superfood), many of which can be had for 2$ 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.
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.
(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)
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.
What? This is 100% of 100% of us.