On a Friday afternoon.
Before Superbowl Sunday.
Aaaagh.
We were going out to eat.
We decided after several quarter sandwiches, sausage bits and pizza pieces, plus 2 chicken wings and some cinnamon dessert loaf, we could—ah—skip supper.
So Jane and I, after 3 months of procrastination and disasters, get to Costco.
by CJ | Feb 5, 2016 | Journal | 44 comments
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Ah yes, my spouse loves dining on Costco’s free samples too.
Been there and done that at Sam’s. Costco opens up in Bixby in a couple of months or so. 🙂
I was there yesterday. I needed gas, bought some wine (I think the Erath ’14 Pinot Noir is very good, even if Dick sold out years ago. I can recommend that at $12.59 (more than the ’13 beside it).) and a XLT “Brawny” flannel shirt.
The samples seemed to be buffalo chicken wings and strips, 4 layer dip and chips, beef & cheese and pork and beef sausages, precooked Italian beef meatballs, etc., everything snacky and calorie rich.
Yum, that all sounds good. But I just had a salad, a store-bought bowl-style kit. Good, though. Mmm.
I haven’t tried Costco, which is new here. We’ve had Sam’s Club, and of course, Walmart. I see there’s a Costco in the middle of downtown. (Good luck getting in and out where that is!) There’s also a location I’m not familiar with. But there’s a location about 30 to 45 min. away from me, near where I used to live. That’ll be the one I’d try.
i found an article from early last year that says Costco will be expanding in Houston and surrounding small towns. Seems they’ve found room in the market. OK, cool, if the products are good and are affordable.
Probably next month before I’ll check out Costco, though. We’ll see how things go.
They can be, but products are often in “generous” sizes, are not necessarily cheaper than in a value-oriented grocery store, carry a narrower scope of items, and can’t be counted on to still carry something they’ve had for the past 4 years. It still pays to be a smart shopper. Gas is nicely cheaper, but I gather you don’t drive.
I try to avoid the samples, as delicious as they are. But I do need to do a Costco run this month. (I go to one that has a large parking lot and a traffic light at the main entrance.)
Costco is a good company: on matter of principle, the owner of the whole company takes only a modest salary and insists on good benefits and wages for his employees. They also have a no-fault returns policy: not what you thought or want, take it back to the desk. As a further bennies, if you can find out where their ‘unwanteds’ outlet is, they sell those at a good price, if you don’t mind buying a return.
Not to disagree with anything CJ said, but some caution is needed. You can return anything, except some computers and electronics that a few were returning yearly to get the next model; but I’ve heard the 30 (90?) day restriction is not generally enforced–maybe not enforced unless you abuse it. I do buy nearly all my computers and such at Costco. But… [rant]
It seems to me you used to be able to buy anything at Costco with the assurance it was good quality and reasonable value if sometimes over-featured. Now, $350 blenders? Seriously? And they tend to shed chrome and gilt bits, metaphorically–that is, their excess features hurt reliability. And they sell some flat out junk; and some really over-priced stuff. So, the days when you could grab stuff at Costco with assurance are gone.
Food that can spoil is, if you will, a demographic trap. Typically, they sell in 2+ lbs (1+ kg) packages. First, think about salad: even for a couple, it will go bad even if you eat it every day. For things like refrigerated entrees, depending on how delicate the product is, do you want to eat the product for several days continuously or a week every other day to keep it from going bad? Spices often will go bad before you use them. Some individual serving sizes are ridiculously huge. So, even for a young, active couple, a lot of food can go to waste; for a single…. Even couples have to ask with every item, “How will consuming this fit into my schedule?” Any social event could put you behind your Costco food disposal schedule. You also need the storage space to store their huge packages; forget it for a small home. That’s why I call it a demographic trap: most demographics, singles and couples, are not well served.
Additionally, Costco has a bad habit of grouping sometimes related, sometimes disparate products. At one time, clam chowder aside, it was impossible to buy soup without half of it being chicken noodle, or at least, chicken and starch. (I thought of it as the chicken noodle tax, and finally stopped buying soup there.) You want type X cookies? You additionally may have to buy several varieties you don’t want. A Smart&Final or one of their associated stores is at least as good value, with better choice.
And then there’s a lousy customer service and long lines–including the return line, so is the drive and hassle worth the refund? I used to put up with Costco because I could just grab stuff with no worries; now that I really have to consider what I’m doing, it’s too much hassle most of the time. I still go quarterly for gas, prescriptions, and vitamins, but after paying nearly $20 for Kirkland shampoo, then finding a name brand half the price for the same amount at Smart&Final….[/rant]
Smart&Final is still a huge grocery with too much choice–you can’t find what you want easily. Where I enjoy shopping is Trader Joe’s, which has things you can’t get elsewhere; fantastic service; prices comparable to S&F or Costco, considering the higher quality; and smaller, easy to shop stores: If I know what I want, I can usually get in and out in five minutes. Wine selection is great and trustworthy at any price. Unconditional returns, just like Costco; indeed, one time I expressed displeasure with a food item I had bought (the managers are easily available and actually listen, unlike those at Costco) the manager forced a refund on me–he just came out when I was checking out, turned his magic key, and posted a refund to my bill. They also pay their employees well and take far better care of them than Costco.
Smart&Final started out supplying restaurants and caterers, so I set my expectations accordingly. Costco sells food in bulk for restaurants and caterers and other businesses. If you don’t want to deal with quantities, then it’s probably not a good place to buy.
TJ’s is notorious for their terrible parking, which is one reason I don’t go there. (The oldest stores, the base of the entire chain, have little parking. The one that was down the street from me had about six spaces. The others have more, but not much. It was basically a neighborhood thing.)
I go regularly to two TJs and often to half a dozen more. None have a parking problem. It’s your local zoning.
S&F is a bit odd. They have some bulk stuff, but mostly it’s individual or close. It’s nothing like as extreme as Costco.
I go to Costco generally once a month, the same day I have to drive to the other side of the island anyway for a Friends of the Library meeting. One of the few quibbles I have with Costco is that it’s a little bit like Odd (Big) Lots; if you see something one trip, there’s no guarantee it will be there the next. It’s especially annoying if you’re accustomed to buying a certain size or brand of product, and Costco has swapped it out for something else, or dropped it altogether. This is especially notable on quasi-seasonal or ‘special’ items, although it’s happened with underwear, instant mashed potatoes, and disposable cups, to name a few. Luckily, when they changed the house brand of kitty litter, there were no feline riots!
Of course I had the same criticisms of Costco. Being able to depend on quality from a retailer (remember Sears & Roebuck?) is something we’ve surrendered in the Wallyworld rush to “cheaper at any price”. I don’t blame the retailers as much as 1) manufacturers for deliberately masquerading junk (I was going to use another word but feared the spam filter) as quality, trading on the reputation of other manufacturers who “delivered the goods”, and 2) consumers who bought the junk, rewarding the retailers to colluded. No matter where one shops/buys things, one must always be a “savvy shopper”.
I also like Trader Joe’s. Sometimes I wish it were a public company I could own stock in, but that might be a bad idea.
Costco has just stopped vetting what manufacturers are pushing at them. They’re letting manufacturers sell them junk so people will go somewhere else and buy a “Costco endorsed” brand.
For example, for years Costco sold a particular Brita pitcher that was small; over-styled, so if you filled anywhere close to its apparent capacity, it would dribble on the counter; and with the opening to the top (unfiltered) reservoir so close to the front of the pitcher, you couldn’t pour without dribbling if any water was in the reservoir. [Fe]Great product, the dribble pitcher.[/Fe]
I would be confident investing in TJ’s, but it’s that it’s a private company that lets it ignore all the usual business customs. Interesting metrics: Costco has the lowest checkout time per customer dollar, that is, checkout is very efficient (for Costco, not for its customers); TJ’s has the greatest sales per square foot, which implies customers can quickly get what they want and get out.
Oooh, that’s a new one. I like that! But don’t we need to alloy it with some Yttrium?
Y?
Seems to denote irony quite well.
Agreeing. I understand why it happens: manufacturer wants to introduce a new product, gives a really good deal, but won’t go on giving it. But—it IS a good way to try a new product. And they are pretty good at maintaining good values on staples. Virgin olive oil 2 large bottles would be ruinous at the grocery, ditto mixed nuts; bought a canister of pepper, again a good deal. And they carry the cat litter we use. And garbage bags. And the best brand of frozen meatballs—far better than what the Safeway sells. Some things we can use in bulk, and those are the ones we buy there. It’s wasteful for us to buy half a salmon. Or a flat of porkchops. Even MY taste for porkchops (I once famously ate ALL the family dinner as a kid not realizing it was for everybody) may be extreme, but they out do it.
This is why the best investment I made in the last few years (aside from finishing installing the hurricane tiesdowns on the house!) was a chest freezer. Not huge, only 7 cubic feet, but it allows me to stock up on anything that can be frozen when it goes on sale. 22# box of chicken legs @.79/pound? Into the freezer it goes, to be broken up later into smaller quantities, or defrosted whole for a barbecue. I freeze things on sale for a good price: shredded cheese, English muffins, meats (especially when the turkeys and hams are cheap around the holidays), frozen veggies ditto, and anything else that fits.
I’ve even caught myself mulling over buying a quarter beef, now that beef is consistently over $4/lb, even for the cheap ground. Anyone wanna split a cow? 😀
I beg to disagree, CJ. Buying pounds of stuff that takes half an hour to return seems like a lousy way to try something new.
I’ve checked some things with Costco. TJ’s sells almonds at $7.50/lb; I think the 2½ lb. container at Costco was about $18, so Costco was a little cheaper, but my consumption varies a lot, so no telling how much shelf life I need. TJ’s certainly has a far better selection of nuts of all kinds. Chocolate is entirely in TJ’s favor: dozens of varieties from milk to 85% cocoa butter–dark, dark, dark! I like the $1.80 for three 40g (1.4 oz) bars of your choice of Belgian darkness. Wine is all TJ’s unless you want to spend $20+ a bottle.
I do agree with kokipy that the Costco frozen salmon is good and cheap. I have some in my freezer now.
We have a different shopping list from yours. We may get software, never computers; did buy a printer there, and hate it. We’ve shifted over to Best Buy for computer products. We don’t buy wine there; did get a telly, which was a good deal; may get household fixtures; may get some food, but never more than two people can consume in 3 days; cept the nuts. I bought some at Safeway, and they were inedible. The Costco ones are much better. So is their popcorn. We got a ladder. TP. Cat litter. Most of what we get in bulk is paper products and other household staples. OTOH, we have gotten home with things that don’t work as expected, and we have taken them back. Being Spokane, however, our return line is usually 3 people. Even after CHristmas the line is about 3x that, but it moves fast.
Hmm, I seem to recall that Costco, just like Sam’s Club, and BJ’s, have programs for businesses that might buy from the club store and then resell, such as for a coffee break room with snacks, etc. Now, granted that not every business needs a huge flat of pork chops or a big bottle of black pepper, there are still items that are more designed for that niche of the market. When I was a member of Costco, my ex-wife and I would buy certain items that were in bulk, but by and large, for groceries, we’d usually go to the base and shop at the Commissary. Costco, BJ’s, and Sam’s Club for those items that the Commissary didn’t carry, or weren’t available at either of the other two clubs.
I don’t see how it’s unreasonable for those clubs to cater to that niche. It might be less profitable for them to stock every size of every product they carry. I can really only speak for Sam’s Club, as the nearest Costco is about 40 miles from my home, and the nearest BJ’s is probably more like 70 miles. And I’ve never been in a TJ’s or a Jungle Jim’s, so can’t even comment on them – they’re like Cincinnati, which is 90 miles away.
Joe: I think most of Costco’s business stuff is now online, costco.com and online tends to have a better selection of a lot of stuff.
CJ: I can’t remember the last time I saw useful software at Costco, though I’ve stopped looking by now. Agree with Best Buy.
Finally, overcame my mental block about paying the extra for a laser printer. Got a Brother color laser at Costco–no more ink cartridges dried out after three pages (and three months of non-use). OTOH, last time I went to my local store, the computer section was a mess. I think I got the printer online, and it has no return limit.
I just bought TurboTax there, cheaper than Intuit sells it online, and I have a DVD if I need to reinstall.
I like Costco’s separately packaged frozen salmon- it is better than most fresh salmon we can get for a reasonable price on the east coast. And I also buy the six pack packages of chicken breasts, thighs and ground turkey meat and cut them apart and freeze them as soon as I get home. The fresh produce is too much for our family of four to get through so I have learned not to buy it. But the two dozen eggs are a good deal, and the paper products also seem like a good buy. And I like the gas. And I often buy the laundry detergent and similar things.
It took me several years to learn what works for us but now I love Costco.
Unfortunately for us, we’re about ninety miles from any Costco and TJ. Would love to join Costco but just can’t justify it unless we get closer to one some year. But when we visit family for the holidays we usually go and conduct a raid — some large vitamins like glucosamine vitamins B, double jars of green olives that my husband loves, Skippy peanut butter. Mom would gets things like bread or Tillamook cheese bricks. However, having just gotten a Food Saver vacuum-packing machine, I can see the plus side of the meats. As it is, I’ll get value packs of hamburger on sale, freeze them for later, or brown all of it in batches and freeze in one pound increments for things like spaghetti sauce or chili. Saves a lot of time during the week after work. Just tried it with some chicken — cubed and vaccum-packed for a later soup and smaler amounts for grilled chicken salad or chicken pot pie! Wanted to shred some up for enchiladas, but will have to save that for another time.
Here at the far end of the back of beyond, our closest Costco, Trader Joe’s or Sam’s club is over 100 miles away. So no, we don’t get to go grazing for Sunday Brunch unless we make an overnight shopping expedition. Its just not worth the gas to buy the Bale-O-TP. However, I have learned Amazon will ship kitty litter cheaper than I can get it at the local Freddies….
Its sort of scary, Amazon must be loosing a lot of money even with Prime in the backwoods areas….
Freddies ain’t Freddies since they sold to Kroger. 🙁
Sigh, yep. That happened about 5 years after they set up shop here. Although I will say Freddy’s made some rather strange impressions around here even before Kroger got into the mix!
First year Freddy’s was here (mid 90s), they tried highlight their efforts to sell snow shovels, ice scrapers and umbrellas – you know, putting the display in the middle of the main walk way into the store. The ones born in this town sort of looked at the display in utter confusion, while those of us who began life outside this area at least recognized the items and just laughed our tails off. First, no matter how much the locals believe they know show, it does NOT snow here. We might get sky-dandruff that lasts about 20 minutes, once every 3 or 4 years (an old BROOM is the weapon of choice around here in this situation). Second, when it freezes here, its bone dry (so who needs scrapers?) Third – umbrellas. *snort* When it rains here, its usually raining SIDEWAYS. Otherwise it just sort of mists. Umbrellas are closely related to kites, only LESS useful, according to the local way of thinking.
Ah well. The joys of living in the hinterlands, strange cultures and all!
Weeble, where is “here”?
Southern Oregon Coast, just north of California redwoods country… We’re on that thin little fingernail width strip of land between the ocean and the mountains so our climate is ocean dominated except for a very few days a year. Generally 50 degrees or so at some point in the day, frost is rare, and so is a day over 80 degrees.
Today it was 77F in Brookings at 3pm. North Bend reported a suspicious 81F. Hence, “Banana Belt”.
We calls it “The Banana Belt” ’round here! 😉
Costco works for me, I was delighted when they opened a store nearby (had stopped in for years when visiting my daughters in New Jersey). I’ve never had to return anything. Lines to get out are ordinarily reasonable. Parking is generous. Workers are well paid and well treated, which is important to me. So I shop there routinely, a little disappointed when they drop some product that I liked, but that’s happened at my local supermarket as well.
I skipped my usual Friday night grocery run in favor of housecleaning, so must do it today. Note: I am going to put off shopping until after the Super Bowl begins, around 1:30 local time. Last time I made the mistake of trying to go to the store in the couple of hours just prior to the big game, and the checkout lines wrapped around the back of the store. Costco used to be a ghost town for the Super Bowl, until some savvy people saw that they were showing the game on the big screen TVs; now it’s just another afternoon, with the exception of big crowds watching the game on the display TVs.
This talk of shopping has made me notice another cultural difference in what we take for granted.
I already knew in my head that our country (the Netherlands) is tiny on a map, and the USA is large. I’ve been there twice on holidays, decades ago mostly along the westcoast from San Francisco into Canada and then across via Yellowstone to Detroit, and two years ago in the Grand Canyon area. So I knew it often took a day of driving to get to the next National Park we wanted to visit. That last trip especially showed me there were large stretches of red nearly desertlike area where very few people lived (and most of those surprisingly seemed to live in a mobile home in the middle of miles of nowhere?! Why there, and why in something which doesn’t seem very heat-resistant?). I did wonder a bit at how the people in those scattered homes and hamlets lived – shopped, went to school, etc., but thought it might just be a few isolated miners or such.
Still, this talk of shows being 40 or 100 miles away confronts me with my assumptions about nearness and availability of everything, from all different kinds of shops and schools to doctors, dentists, hospitals, and any othrr kind of professionals.
Our whole country is about 100 miles across west to east, and double that north to south. We live in it with 16 million people, and even a small village usually has several thousand people, and the next villages maybe 5 or 10 miles away. Even in the ‘remote’ areas in the east and north-east, a large city with all possible amenities would at most be 20 miles away, and a village with a shop at most 5 miles.
There are so many things I unthinkingly take for granted because of this closeness: availability of anything one might need, including a choice of schools and shops and professional services. The choice to live in a village or small town and work in the city, or sometimes vice-versa: commuting distances are small, though commuting times are similar (people who live closer to their jobs, i.e. a lot of people here, commute by bike instead of car – international research has shown that commuting times are remarkably similar in different countries, so people seem to use that as a yardstick for how far from their jobs they’re willing to live, rather than the distance itself).
It’s good to be remonded that this is not a natural result of living in a fairly affluent first-world country, but also a function of our small and relatively ‘crowded’ country. Not that it feels especially crowded to us, unless perhaps you’ve chosen to live in a city.
I guess it’s all in what one is used to, but it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me.
We ‘Murricans do love us our wide open spaces 😀 Couple that with our automobile love affair, and yep, we do tend to sprawl. It bit my MiL the last couple of years; she chose to live on an island with limited access and limited services to ‘enjoy the rural life style’. Then she suffered a series of illnesses with no available caregivers after she got out of the hospital, not even Meals-On-Wheels.
It’s two nights in a motel to drive to Jane’s sister in Chicago, most of a day to drive to her brother in Seattle. My brother is 3 nights away, or 2000 miles. And as you say, there’s a lot of ’empty’ out there, no water, little rain, and honestly, when I see one of those trailers out there in nowhere, I am not moved to knock on the door, having had one such old codger fire warning shots at myself and two friends when we were about ten years old. The people who choose to live alone out there may be nice, sweet people who love to watch the desert sun come up, but some of them are…different.
Having traveled in Europe, I know the closeness to everything. And of people to people. If we took away all the lawns and concentrated the green into parks, we could compress our cities a lot. We sprawl. Houses are lately much bigger than they need to be—we call them McMansions, a reference to McDonald’s burgers, which is the epitome of the one-design burger that’s everywhere. And I have never understood the joy of cultivating a lawn instead of, say, a flower garden or a pond.
I say this, and our house is on an unusually large lot for its size, being on a corner. But we have no grass! And we could, though with difficulty, walk to a supermarket, a hardware store, two bistros and a fast food and a pizza place, several coffee stands, an auto parts store, a drugstore,a school, two parks, a library and a post office, but we’d be exhausted from the hike.
@Hanneke: Remember, the USofA is about the same size as all of Western Europe, more or less. And just one language.
@Hanneke: And Australia is the same size as the continental US with far less people. My brother lives 600 miles from my sister, in the same state although in the NE part of it. She’s in Sydney and it takes him an hour or so’s drive to a train station or airport. And the train is then another 6 hours – it’s not high speed nor is it a goods train.
He should be thankful it’s not the ‘Gan, or it’d be 6 days! (One presumes it might still run.)
Yes, the “Gan” still runs. They moved some of the tracks a number of years ago so that when it rains (every 7 years or so) the tracks don’t get washed out and the train doesn’t get stranded. These days I believe it’s even got aircon.
I went to Costco for TurboTax today (only 6.5mi, and the only danged reason I have to have a computer running Windows, at least Vista this year! 🙁 ), and the parking space I found was nose to nose with a little PTCruiser with the license plate “Mouser”. My immediate thought was Fritz Lieber! 😉
Lol! Indeed. Loved those stories!
If some friend is going to Costco I might tag along, but I wouldn’t go there often enough to justify the membership fee. They tend to emphasize case lots and I live alone in a smallish place stuffed with stuff. Though I do have a chest freezer (also stuffed) I must be very judicious about buying in quantity. It’s no saving in having some great deal go rancid before I’ve dutifully gnawed my way through it.