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I want to live like Costco people

tastecooking.com

191–200 of 760 posts

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#191

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…

Trader Joes, Whole Foods, ALDI, Sprouts.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#192
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment, but IMHO the main reason to not love it so much is the annual membership fee. It sits well with cult cultivation. Other stores don't require it and they don't form a cult around them.

On the contrary, the fact that they exclude free riders is what makes the whole thing possible.

There is no such thing as a free rider in this context, only a fee rider. After all, other supermarkets do fine without a fee. This is not Amazon Prime with free shipping that we're talking about. Charging for just the item still works.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#194
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#195
post #3

I'm guessing the title is a reference to Pulp - Common People

Jarvis Cocker wrote Common People about a girl he did actually know, who was "identified" as Danae Stratou, daughter of a Greek textile magnate, and while she said "the only person who knows for sure is Cocker himself", emails between her and her husband indicated that she saw herself saying and doing several of the things he references, "yeah, I'm rather ashamed to admit it, that -does- sound like me and things I'd say then".

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...

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#196
post #3

I'm guessing the title is a reference to Pulp - Common People

I wanna live like Costco people I wanna do whatever Costco people do Wanna sleep with Costco people I wanna sleep with Costco people like you. Well, what else could I do? I said, "I'll... I'll see what I can do.

"And she just laughed and said 'Oh, you're so funny.' And I said 'Yeah, well, I can't see anyone else smiling in here'."

... which often mirrors my feelings in Costco, particularly near the registers, where oftentimes in my local stores it feels more akin to the Thunderdome.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#197
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wild that you can look at a physical testament of the sheer abundance and affordability that capitalism has created for almost every consumer good, and people will call it a dystopia because they experience traffic or fight over the right to buy cardboard childrens toys

Would the world really be worse off without cardboard children's toys but also without people fighting over cardboard children's toys?

There is nothing about Costco that is causing the fighting.

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.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#198
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

>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.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#199
I have a really mixed feeling about Costco. I hate it, I going there, I hate the crowds, the parking, the people, being hawked a credit card, a cell phone, whatever the vendors are selling. It makes me feel like a pig in a slaughterhouse waiting to get out of the store, I feel like it's the platonic form of consumption. We all go to the nice little consumption center like good piggies to get our sustenance and to get milked further (maybe I should buy some electronics!)

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.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#200

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…

> 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 t…

> 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.

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