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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#251

Post by brailsafe »

My impression of Costco's selection is that it's the retail distillation of car-centric suburbs, despite it not being exclusively those people who shop there. The happy suburbanite cares about convenience and quantity above all else, from what I can tell anyway. They don't really have a varied sense of taste, they just want stuff, and they want easy access to that stuff. They like a "haul" that they do once a month, and buy vehicles that will fit it.

For me, I'll join a friend who has a membership from time to time, but I'll only get chicken breasts, a rotisserie, maybe frozen fruit if the price is competitive, and... soap; everything else is just noise and/or extra calories that I wouldn't have bought anywhere else but happens to fit in the industrial-size cart and usually isn't a substantially better price, or it's just not a good offering. I could buy greek Yogurt cups, but really I don't want that brand or the lemon or lime ones, so I'm paying marginally less to enjoy half of them. I could buy salsa, but unless it's a party, I have no need for a year's supply. It's just a lot and it's probably kind of agreeable. Also the blankets, they're alright.

The small selection of things I get are the few items—as the probably AI author suggests—that I'd either buy anyway in smaller quantities or just don't have opinions about. The one time I actually did have a membership, I'd find myself working backwards from it to justify to expense. I let Costco borrow my money and to get it back I'd need to exploit their good deals, but ultimately they just made a killing off of me filling my cart with arbitrary bullshit stuff.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#252

Post by kbenson »

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…

> Ok, so 100 people can all drive to the store, or one delivery truck can drive to everyone's house.

Whether you see that statement and read it as "obviously the delivery truck is better" or "obviously, going myself is better" is going to be primarily based on how far away from Costco you live, and how much you buy when you go.

I live a bit more than a mile away from Costco. I often buy 25-60 items, for each of the about weekly trips. There's enough large items that a normal delivery truck that could safely navigate and stop often in residential areas would have no change of fitting 100 people's purchases into it in a way to be easily offloaded (just the toilet paper and paper toweling would take up significant space). It's much less wasteful on almost all metrics for me to go to Costco. That's before we get into the fact that most of what I'm buying is produce and other food stuffs I wouldn't want shipped for worry they would spend longer than I wanted out of refrigeration.

If I lived an hour away that calculation turns out entirely differently, at least as long as there's enough people close by with purchases to gain efficiencies of travel.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#253

Post by CapmCrackaWaka »

bellgrove wrote: post #56
oa335 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100%. Costco exemplifies american dream... recent immigrants perusing well-stocked aisles, friendly employees, ample parking, cheap tasty hot dogs, etc.

Perhaps this depends a lot on location. Parking is a nightmare at my local Costco. The employees are friendly enough most of the time. I truly admire the value and business model but Costco is pretty much the absolute worst shopping experience I can think of.

It's because they are so busy. Yeah, costco is the one store I go to that people seem to have 0 spatial awareness. Every time I go, someone will just stop moving in the middle of the aisle, creating backups, without any shame. But I bet if your other local grocery stores were as busy as costco, they would have the same issues.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#254

Post by [deleted] »

thephyber wrote: post #247
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…

It’s much more complicated than that. In a society where everybody is already driving to school, work, food, shopping medical appointments, gas stations, kids sports, etc this is just a marginal additional trip for the consumer. Having redundant logistics companies (USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon, WalMart, Uber, etc) all making deliveries optimizing for something other than _minimum distance traveled_ means they aren’…

[deleted]

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#255

Post by senbrow »

makeitdouble wrote: post #243
pupppet wrote: post #4

Whenever someone says America can do great things, I don't think of battleships, fighter jets, or AI models, I think of Costco.

To note, Costco doesn't make much sense in most places outside of the USA (and doesn't have to. No shop needs to cater to the whole world). It still exists in select locations in some countries, but are more exotic experiences than anything else. Shopping for weeks of groceries at a time is IMHO crazy niche, it requires a level of isolation and buying power that is seldom combined.

I think your main point is right, but there are many Costco members who are NOT shopping for "weeks of groceries" at a time, and many of them live in suburban or urban areas with high density. For example, I shop at Costco once a week for just my girlfriend and I; we don't buy outrageous quantities. We live in a populous area.

Our situation is pretty common; it's just a normal grocery store in effect for lots of people. The weird stereotype of Costco shoppers driving for miles to buy huge carts of food just doesn't line up with the typical case for my area.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#256

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

oa335 wrote: post #23
pupppet wrote: post #4

Whenever someone says America can do great things, I don't think of battleships, fighter jets, or AI models, I think of Costco.

Agree 100%. Costco exemplifies american dream... recent immigrants perusing well-stocked aisles, friendly employees, ample parking, cheap tasty hot dogs, etc.

For lots and lots of Americans, endless consumerism, driving and junk food are not a part of the dream in any way.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#257

Post by malfist »

borski wrote: post #67
whatever1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not only a faster Temu for e-junk. It can also deliver your paper wipes and bananas in the same order. Could you just place 3 different orders to 3 different vendors? Sure. Could you just drive to the grocery for 2 bananas and then to Costco for the big discounted paper wipes? Sure. But likely you will not. Which is why Amazon pulls a Trillion in revenue.

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.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#258

Post by kittikitti »

I think Costco is good, but it's vastly overhyped. Comparing the two is just ridiculous. Having only 4,000 SKU's and thinking less choice is good is brainrotted. Costco shoppers are annoyingly conformist.

Costco is an exploitative mega-corporation and Amazon is too. Ask a Costco enthusiast and they will say they do it out of the goodness of their heart. It's really annoying and makes me completely avoid Costco. Please, tell me again how you think Costco hotdogs were invented by Jesus Christ and how you love guzzling down their wieners.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#259

Post by Amezarak »

titanomachy wrote: post #201
Amezarak wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pro…

Well, that’s what I’m getting at. There’s no reason I can’t go to the store every day - I pass right by a lot of grocery stores. I don’t want to go in them or even think about buying stuff any more than I have to - it’s tedious. I want to always have almost everything I’d want on-hand.

I think the the GP would love this too if it was practical- but it’s not for him. I’d be more interested in hearing the exact reasons why. I don’t think density is itself that related; you can pack in quite a lot with good organization. I do wonder if it’s a rental vs buying thing; in the US the average trailer is about the same size as the average apartment, but you’re way more likely to see extra refrigerators and deep freezes and stuff of that nature in trailers, because they’re often owned and the resident is responsible for all the appliances, whereas the cultural expectation for an apartment is even though you could get more, it’s the landlords’ area to handle. So I wonder how much is just really small cultural things vs practicality. Thus getting more to his dislike of it - but I’d be interested to here more specifically his thoughts.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#260

Post by halostatue »

shawn_w wrote: post #229
ChoGGi wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm grabbing a couple items, I can be in and out of my Costco on the way back from work in 10m if the timing is right. But yeah the wrong day, and it's 30m at least.

People go to Costco and only get a couple of things and not a cart load? You've got more self control than I.

I find it easier to do when I bike to Costco _without_ my trailer.

(I have two good sized panniers and can end up with ~$150 of foodstuffs packed well in them no problem. More often than not, I get less than that and add more stops to the trip to pick up from 3-4 places while out. And I get my exercise while I'm at it.)

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