271–280 of 610 posts
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Nobody does Costco and something else. That’s insane. Like going to IKEA and then somewhere else. Impossible.
I live 5 min from my closest Costco, and I go 2-3 times per week for a handful of items. It’s like any other store.
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There are four Costco's in NYC, all but one in working class neighborhoods, and full of large families getting deals.
Yeah, they're in Manhattan. Wasn't trying to paint NYC as homogeneous, just wanted to ground my opinions with experience folks can understand.
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They must have been using different crates for you (different region or perhaps era). For me they were standard plastic bins[1] with a separate “cold bag” inside for frozen stuff. No actual styrofoam I recall, although this was also over 10 years ago so I could be misremembering. [1] https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-9745G
The style of plastic bin definitely looks the same. The ones we were getting looked something like this[0], same folding-flap top as in your link but form-fitted insulation inside: [0] https://flexcontainer.com/product/insulated-molded-container...
It’s been a long time. Very plausible that we did get the ones with the styrofoam sometimes and I just don’t remember. I know we got the cooler bag sometime.
This is about 80% spot on, but the last 20% fails to mention that you can avoid the in store experience if it isn't for you, and in fact get the stuff you want delivered to your door in a short period of time, using services like instacart. Costco even partners directly with instacart for same day delivery. You can use your membership to get same day delivery shopping on costco's website and they will use instacart t…
True, but at higher prices (and with delivery fees), which somewhat defeats the purpose of the cost savings at Costco.
> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/mystery-amazon-pa...
I saw commentary from a garment designer that there is enough clothing currently unused on earth to clothe the entire next six generations even if we completely stopped all production now.
At least in person people can try the stuff on and ensure it fits.
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I live 5 min from my closest Costco, and I go 2-3 times per week for a handful of items. It’s like any other store.
I actually saw a man check out at Costco once with just a chicken and some milk what a legend.
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In Q1 2026, AWS was 60% (roughly) of Amazon’s operating income. I’m not so sure their retail piece is the part that’s making them big money.
Thats the story they tell investors because investors love a growing tech company. But scratch the surface a bit and you see retail shoveling most of it's profit into purchasing AWS.
> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…
> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…
Yeah, this argument falls flat on it's face. Of course it's more complex than that. When I worked from the office, centralized retail was very convenient and hardly added any driving. If you work from home, the opposite is true. The next revolution would be to standardize reusable packaging, that same daily delivery truck could bring that back. But only government could make that happen.
> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…
Perhaps this is just slightly oversimplified Amazon goes to great lengths to make purchasing exceedingly easy and fast. And with Prime, customers can buy a single, low-priced item with no shipping costs, cf. the Costco requirement to buy in bulk quantities. As one would expect, this convenience and facilitation leads to more purchases. It also results in more packaging, more waste, more emissions, etc. This was detai…
And how Costco can never be relied on having the same item outside of those core products every time you go to the store? Better buy it now since next month they may no longer have it and you need to wait 6mo before you see it again - if ever.
That’s on purpose to induce you to wander the store more and “discover” items for impulse purchasing.
Costco absolutely optimizes as much as it can to induce impulse buys. Pretending they don’t is a weird take. Amazon might make it more frictionless, but every retailer out there is doing this sort of thing. I kind of prefer amazons way of doing it since it doesn’t introduce friction to my buying experience and waste my time.
Costco is also world renowned as a meme for peak American style consumerism. I say this as an executive member who also buys a lot off Amazon. They are just yin and yang of the retailer experience. I don’t really see one as more evil or better than the other - just totally opposite business models.