Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I want to live like Costco people

tastecooking.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 760 posts

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#711

Post by scottyah »

sfn42 wrote: post #618
Kirby64 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My slightly modified Subaru Wagon from '05 "out-accelerated" base Teslas - dead even in 1st gear, started pulling once the shift to 2nd happened. Slightly modified is doing some heavy lifting there. No 2005 Subaru wagon in stock config is anywhere close to beating a Model 3. > (Most) EVs cannot shift gears to get torque multiplication, so they start fast, but fall off as speeds get higher. Pretty much irrelevant, b…

Another reason it's irrelevant is you just don't need the accel. Flooring a Tesla is fun once or twice, but if you floor it every chance you get I don't want to be your passenger. It's neither comfortable nor safe.

Good for safety and smiles though

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#712

Post by m3047 »

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #151
queuebert wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a gimmick when the business has been so successful for so many years. They target educated shoppers who want to buy quality at minimum markup and not think too hard about it. If I want a TV, I know Costco will have good ones at a good price. If I need socks, same. Their food is cheaper and better than Kroger. It's just a win-win for shoppers and Costco. The only tradeoff is selection and dealing wi…

Parallel to that, I have to imagine Costco makes a lot of money off of impulse purchases, which are induced by uncertainty in the specific items they will have available, plus mutable store layouts. Long ago in undergrad I took a retail marketing class and we did a field trip to Costco; the GM told us it was part of their policy to rearrange parts of the store occasionally so that you had to browse the entire place t…

Stuff that's not going to be restocked has asterisks on the shelf placard... or so I've been told and it seems to match my experience.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#713

Post by scottyah »

com2kid wrote: post #596
fragmede wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is what about toilets. You'd think they're all the same, but a $700 Toto bidet with a heated seat that cleans your butthole with warm water is a better experience than using toilet paper.

My $200 home depot bidet does the same. Toto survives by brand name reco only nowadays.

That and all the work they do for AI semiconductors.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#714

Post by slumberlust »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #59

> The bakery muffins really are smaller now than I remember them being as a kid Costco bakery muffins are HUGE. If they're smaller now than they used to be, I'd argue maybe that's a good thing. > They’re always in far-off places My Costco is only about 1 1/2 miles away. Literally walked there for lunch once. > the building, an aircraft hangar–size warehouse spectacle operated very much in line with casino design: a p…

Out of all the things I enjoy buying at Costco, the bakery section is mostly a miss. Cookies are bland and they make you buy bottom tier flavors like oatmeal to subsidize the macadamia's. Muffins are bland and tasteless. Bagels are just circular bread instead of a nice chewy outside. They also use carraway seeds in their everything seasoning, so too much licorice for my personal tastes. At .50 a pop I have no complaints on the croissants.

Maybe the East coast bakery just can't compete, but I find time and time again I want to buy something yummy and can't find anything that is worth it.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#715

Post by merely-unlikely »

legitster wrote: post #41
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me. The kinds of brands I like to buy aren’t what they sell at Costco Good example of how people can build identities through their brand choices and purchasing habits. It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product…

> "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All th…

> you can drink Coke, too

I drink water. Which means I'm just like Cristiano Ronaldo[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ZLS1V3iMw

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#717

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

threetonesun wrote: post #659
robocat wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> race track I presume that F150 ain't getting round the corners very quickly. I reckon optimising for straight line speed is a strange goal.

Right, there's no form of racing that is a straight line, is there. Regardless, optimizing a pick up for 0-60 time is a strange goal, unless you have some express desire to launch 2x4s a great distance in a complicated way.

This has to be sarcasm, right?

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#718

Post by scottyah »

legitster wrote: post #265
elzbardico wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American capitalism, for all its defects, was always a mass oriented endeavour in constrast with Continental Europe. The mantra was sell more, more, more and more, and to do that, you need to sell things to poor people to. A French enterpreneur would be happy selling phones only for the upper middle class and above. In America the idea was to install as many landlines as possible and gain with scale.

> American capitalism, for all its defects, was always a mass oriented endeavour in constrast with Continental Europe. I think it's important to call out that the "capitalism = more stuff" idea is a bit of historical revisionism. Soviet leaders very specifically saw the goal of Communism was to create abundance and a post scarcity society. There are lots of quotes in particular from Khrushchev about this: “The social…

> I think it's important to call out that the "capitalism = more stuff" idea is a bit of historical revisionism.

As always with communism, there's the lofty ideals and quotes on what it should be, but then there's the contrasting reality of Continental Europe's run at communism producing way less stuff.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#719

Post by scottyah »

alhazrod wrote: post #144
legitster wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All th…

An Italian man once told me, "Coca-Cola is American champagne." Take it as you will.

Was that during our prohibition?

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#720

Post by antonymoose »

relaxing wrote: post #631
antonymoose wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my point, it didn’t work and we did quit shopping there. The prices never really worked out in our favor and the experience of finding a cool product we did truly love only to find it not stocked the following month is awful. It really makes me wonder how astroturfed the brand is.

Out of curiosity, where do you shop instead? Around me the prices are better than any other stores except Aldi.

Charleston, SC circa 2018-2022
Post reply on HN