Costco is the anti-Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#471

Post by underlipton » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

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 should be, "One delivery truck drives to several manned neighborhood drop-off points a couple of times a week, and 100 people walk to those points and walk home with their packages." Central distribution points that you have to drive to are as untenable long-term as everything being delivered individually.

Frankly, this goes for food delivery, too.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#472

Post by mlinsey » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

Costco is an elegant solution for the suburbs, where everyone is driving around a vehicle large enough to store giant boxes off a pallet and bring them home. Here in NYC, it's really impractical to go to a warehouse and carry a month's worth of supplies home on the subway. The flip side is that the Amazon last mile deliveries are done on electric scooters that can bring a whole trailer worth of packages to the mailroom of a big apartment building. These have some other externalities (eg around traffic laws and sidewalk space) but they are on the whole a lot more resource-efficient than everyone driving around giant cars to go to the store.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#473

Post by underlipton » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #431

adrianN wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is less traffic and hence less noise when people have stores at a walkable distance.

I doubt this is true. I walk to the store when I quickly need to get eggs or milk or something random I forgot. But I’ll drive to do the weekly grocery trip because I can’t carry food for a week (for a family) on my own without driving. It’s almost like the AI answering “should I walk or drive to the nearest carwash”. Sure I can walk, I just can’t complete the grocery shopping lol.

https://www.google.com/search?q=grocery cart

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#474

Post by jungturk » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

__float wrote: post #462

newsoftheday wrote: post #440

We are probably fortunate, we live 5 minutes from one Costco, 6 minutes from a second one and 17 minutes from a third. My wife visits Costco every week, Walmart every week often on different days, etc. We buy from Amazon online frequently. Sometimes an item is cheaper at one place than another, comparison shopping, sometimes cheaper online, sometimes cheaper in the store. It all works, though the article mentions pub…

Why do you need to visit Costco every week? This feels like the most inefficient combination of the city-style "shop small quantities often" and suburb-style "buy everything in bulk once a month". > ...it may just be disguised political messaging article. It doesn't seem to be particularly for or against the NYC proposal to me, so I don't understand why you are suggesting this.

Costco sells fresh food (produce, meats, baked goods) and quite a bit of prepared-on-site ready-to-eat deli choices (soups, salads, tacos, etc...).

While sold in larger packages, they don't last any longer and so must be bought frequently.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#475

Post by quacker » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #251

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,…

I don’t need “a varied sense of taste” to save money on gas and non-perishables.

I don’t need “a varied sense of taste” to budget and do simple math to determine the membership is worth it.

Babies don’t need “a varied sense of taste” to use diapers purchased from Costco in bulk at a great price.

Do I lack a “varied sense of taste” when I buy ingredients from Costco, like chicken thighs and rice and eggs and olive oil, and cook them at home?

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#476

Post by BobaFloutist » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

hx8 wrote: post #319

oatmeal1 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next revolution is zoning reform so it's legal to build shopping people want to do within walking distance of where they live.

As someone that has lived in a walkable neighborhood with a lot of shopping let me tell you, it doesn't solve the problem. Realistically you aren't going to reach more than 250k skus within a 20 minute walk of your home, and probably less. Even this is very heavily biased towards using retail space instead of space for anything else (homes, restaurants, parks, offices). You can only build up to add more space within…

I think it would still be a vast improvement if online shopping was relegated back to only a narrow set of specialty goods.

And this is ignoring the possibility of ordering less time sensitive specialty goods to a relevant store, where they can arrive on an existing shipment and share an errand with whatever else you might want from that store.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#477

Post by conductr » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

claw-el wrote: post #79

lynndotpy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those individual trips to the store are typically for more than single items, and are often incorporated into trips one would have taken anyways as part of the doing of errands.

Technically, so is the home delivery. It is usually a delivery truck full of packages for nearby addresses.

Amazon routinely is delivering things to my house 3+ times in a single day. They don’t do a great job of grouping their orders into deliveries.

We’re usually to “blame”. We don’t do coordinated orders in our household. We have 3 people ordering individually and I know I sometimes place multiple orders per day. But, I’d expect that shouldn’t matter and they’d notice all these orders with the same address could be put on the same delivery truck. Instead, it seems they just process orders as first in first out.

They have recently added a feature in the delivery options if I already have a pending delivery it will say “add to your Tuesday delivery” or similar, which I’m likely to choose. For a while they really wanted me to use an “Amazon day”, which would be like picking Tuesday as the day of the week my deliveries would come on. I specifically pay for Prime to have fast delivery so I don’t understand why they ever thought I’d go for that.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#478

Post by gcanyon » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

throw1234567891 wrote: post #416

tstenner wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a walkable quarter and I can reach three full supermarkets and 2 specialty supermarkets within 5 minutes. Doesn't matter whether I need to stock up on milk, vegetables or hand peeled shrimp in garlic sauce, I can get it. Same with public schools (5 within a 2 mile radius), childcare (3), hospitals (2) and the park.

As you have to carry everything, how often do you go shopping?

Maybe I'm unusual, but I live in NYC, with a grocery store a two minute walk away, a Target and Trader Joe's a three minute walk away, and a Whole Foods a four minute walk away. (and various bodegas within minutes as well)

I went to that grocery store twice yesterday (picked up a bag of popcorn and a bottle of water to go to the movies, then later some potatoes and sour cream for dinner). I'm going in a few minutes to get eggs for lunch. So three times in the last 24 hours :-)

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#479

Post by conductr » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #360

claw-el wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, so is the home delivery. It is usually a delivery truck full of packages for nearby addresses.

Right, so with Amazon you have one truck visiting 100 addresses every day for two weeks (because people are buying 2-3 items per order). With Costco you have 100 people each driving to Costco once, on a single day. From a cars-on-the-road and fuel expenditure perspective, the latter sounds better. If Amazon customers ordered like Costco shoppers, the Amazon model might very well be better. But they don't, so it isn't…

In reality, you get both. People don’t shop at Costco OR Amazon. People primarily go to Costco for food (then stumble on everything else), Amazon has struggled over and over to get their grocery business to catch on. They’re just the best source of the everything else part.

These are only comparable in an academic business model comparison, in reality, these are different retailers selling different things and consumers behave differently depending on context of what they’re buying. A lot of people want low cost on food, meanwhile, they’ll spend superficially on disposable plastic junk with very little practical value. I’m taking about the American consumer specifically when I say everyone.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#480

Post by BobaFloutist » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

beAbU wrote: post #354

goosejuice wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250k skus seems pretty arbitrary. What's the significance of this number? A bodega goes a long way for most people's daily needs.

A bodega is often (and usually unavoidably) more expensive than a bigger grocery retail chain that's further away. Price conscious buyers will opt to drive to the bigger, farther away store because it has more variety, and the essentials are cheaper. I know I do this.

Part of this is defacto deregulation allowing suppliers to overcharge smaller stores with less purchasing power than big chains. (The policy not to enforce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act).

Part of this is overregulation, with zoning and planning departments enacting policies that make smaller retail spaces less attractive to builders and owners, leading to a low supply, and allowing egregious rent for well located small retail.

Yes, economies of scale likely mean that larger businesses can afford lower prices, but smaller businesses also get to avoid some costs (no large administrative corporate departments necessary for a one-location bodega), so the prices probably don't need to be as far apart as they are.