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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#201

Post by titanomachy »

Amezarak wrote: post #139
rr808 wrote: post #75

I dont like Costco, it epitomizes American over-consumption. Parking lot overflowing with oversized SUVs with people loading up oversized trolleys with food from food corporations to take back to their oversized fridges and storage basements.

> to take back to their oversized fridges and storage basements. It's really awesome to have plenty of food storage, with extra and oversized refrigerators, and a deep freeze too. I keep mine full of vegetables and beef - I have a whole beef slaughtered annually. Can you explain why this is a bad thing or why it means overconsumption? Why is the stereotypical "European" method of going to the store every day superior…

There’s nothing wrong with your way, it’s just a different lifestyle based on how dense of a community you live in. People living in apartments in dense cities don’t have room for a whole cow in their apartment, but there’s probably a few grocery stores in walking distance, so they pick up food more often. Living in a suburb means that you probably don’t walk by a grocery store on your way home from work, and you probably have some space, so it makes sense to shop less frequently and in bulk. These are both valid ways to live that satisfy different sets of preferences.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#202

Post by rpdillon »

oezi wrote: post #157
rpdillon wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over-consumption? That doesn't follow. I sustain my family on Costco, going once a month or so, but have to feed four people, including two teenagers that consume way more than 2000 calories a day. You keep using the word "oversized", but that assumes the SUV, the fridge, the trolley are not suited for purpose. But they are! I think what you're really critiquing is people who don't shop frequently, and therefore buy…

I think the poster is indeed criticizing bulk shopping. I would then to agree that shopping in bulk makes it easier to overprovision or to have things go to waste or being bought superfluously. I am also not sure about it being cheaper in total because my experience with bulk sellers is that they achieve their profit margins by their product mix, so selling you some cheap items as loss leaders or discount items and r…

I've done the A/B test. Costco saves my family 25% across just food, ignoring other stuff I get there (batteries, shirts, jackets, shoes, underwear, deodorant, etc.)

You're pointing out that you need to plan properly to bulk shop, since you're necessarily modeling future consumption over days/weeks across multiple people, but that's different than over-consumption. It means you have to be analytical and plan, but that's exactly how we do it.

I despise the city living lifestyle, where folks jam themselves in tiny grocery stores to buy 2oz containers of jam and mustard because they don't have enough room to actually fit the food they want. My sister and dad live this way in NYC, and it's annoying as hell every single time I visit them. Wanna throw a meal together? First step: leave the apartment.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#203

Post by llbbdd »

dpark wrote: post #102
newaccountman2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could imagine Amazon incentivizing reusable containers on their own TBH. If I was living in a house and not an apartment, I could easily imagine putting the Amazon bins back out so the next time I get a delivery, they take those, and we are constantly cycling bins back and forth. Even environment aside, from a purely self-interested perspective, I would much prefer it to dealing with the recycling Amazon deliveries…

Amazon did that with an earlier version of their grocery delivery service. I assume the cost and logistics of managing and cleaning the bins just wasn’t worth it because their grocery service delivers in paper bags now. One problem with the bins for normal items is that rarely will they be packed to the brim. I imagine the overall item density would drop significantly if they started using standardized bins instead o…

I used this service before it rolled out widely and these boxes were a mixed bag. On one hand they worked really well, they were essentially insulated hard totes with styrofoam lining and often had dry ice in them for anything that needed to be kept cold. On the other hand, I lived in an apartment, so storing 3-4 totes for a week or more was a real chore.

The funniest thing I remember though is that the totes weren't optimized for the size of some of the products available very well - if you put a frozen pizza in it, it sat diagonally, and without enough room to really put anything above or below it. You order four frozen pizzas, and you're allocating many cubic meters of apartment space for them until the next time you order.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#204

Post by doginasuit »

khurs wrote: post #126

All the comments appear to be US centric, but Costco is also in other countries. So to tell you about the UK: Here membership is unusual in that it isn't technically open to everyone, it's business and certain professions: https://www.costco.co.uk/membership but in reality anyone who wants to join can find a way. Also no mention in the article of non-food. In UK Costco is known for special offers on electrical and wh…

That's interesting, what do people have to do to get membership?

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#205

Post by Grombobulous »

titanomachy wrote: post #196
christina97 wrote: post #181

This post seems quite far fetched. Amazon is well aware of the paradox of choice, and the vast majority of UI changes I have seen recently are exactly those that guide and reinforce you to buy one option, without the decision paralysis. Items are not homogeneous, and it is obvious that they try to concentrate purchases to a smaller set of SKUs to reap the same benefits as Costco. It’s simply that Amazon can additiona…

Somehow Costco managed to get their store right in the middle of downtown Vancouver. They put it under some condo towers.

That sounds like they might have leveraged housing development incentives. In a lot of cities with high housing costs you get tax breaks for investing in residential properties.

I don’t know if Vancouver has any of these off the top of my head.

And what you’re saying is true as a generality, that big box stores often fit in at least some parking in dense areas. I have found that grocery stores and big box stores do the most parking subsidies especially when they expect their customers to be buying a lot of bulky items. They seem to frequently have free or deeply discounted validated parking in underground garages.

Maybe not in Manhattan or anything but in many other large cities with high land value in downtown areas.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#206

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> 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 detailed in a 2024 Netflix documentary that interviewed a former Amazon VP who was fired for her environmental activism

https://www.netflix.com/title/81554996

She disclosed, brace yourself, that Amazon encourages people to buy stuff they do not need

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/former-amazon-employee-b...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/amazon-settles-with-employee...

Unlike Costco, Amazon does not disclose data on its environmental impact, e.g., carbon emissions. It's possible Amazon's impact is less than Costco's, Costco's data shows its impact is relatively severe, but if that were true, then why not share the data

Is driving to a warehouse, retrieving items in bulk, paying for them and driving the items home, i.e., offline shopping, as easy as placing an order on Amazon

Of course some HN reply will say "yes", implying that the former Amazon VP's story is false

Let the reader decide who to beileve

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#207

Post by bombcar »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #206
gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> 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…

If you don’t think Costco encourages people to buy things they don’t need you’ve never shopped at Costco.

Anyway, my 55 gallon drum of mayonnaise is starting to go bad, got to make a run.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#208

Post by dragontamer »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #158
dragontamer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human driving to work, various activities, to the grocery store (and wherever else) isn't doing it for just one item like Amazon though. The vast majority of those Amazon packages are for one thing. When the inefficient pickup truck comes back with a whole weeks worth of $200+ groceries, that further increases the efficiency of the home buyer. It's unlikely that a daily commuter would go to Costco for just one ga…

Amazon generally doesn't do single item delivery for perishable groceries though, Fresh has a $100 minimum to avoid fees, for example. Non-perishables are fine on a single-unit purchase because again, they're not just going to your house, they're going to dozens in your area every single day. I know where you're coming from, but there's a reason this whole model exists, and it's not because it costs more.

Well sure. But Costcos model is clear to anyone who visits it. You only have to look at all the other shopping carts surrounding you to get an idea of how things work.

Costco shoppers buy a lot at a time. Because Costco forces you to buy 4 tubes of Toothpaste, 24 eggs (or 60 eggs), minimum 1 gallon of milk (no half gallons or pints), and like 20 lbs of rice / 10kg for the Europeans who havent been here and like 3000 meters of plastic wrap.

For Costco, the efficiency is the shear size of the shopping carts and shear mass of the goods sold at a time.

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You literally can't buy only one bar of soap or one toothbrush like you can from Amazon.com or other stores. There's efficiency here because of simple mass.

In contrast, I can look out and see the Amazon packages in my neighbors doors. It's all single items across the neighborhood.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#209

Post by lotsofpulp »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #198
imoverclocked wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me. Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things n…

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.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#210

Post by Grombobulous »

I think the article misses discussing Costco’s growing online business. There are a ton of Costco items that you can only buy online or that are sold in a different way online, and they’re often doing so with included shipping very similar to Amazon’s business model.

The shipping is slower, but it’s an interesting part of their business, and I encourage Costco members to try it out. You’d be surprised at the quantity of things you really don’t need to go to the warehouse for.

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