Costco is the anti-Amazon

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• Hacker News
• I just realized that I use more different kind of stores and transportation to shop than ever. I walk for groceries, ride the motorbike to malls for monthly or yearly buys like clothing or light electronics, take the metro to specialized stores for heavier items and buy online hard-to-find or high-margin-elsewhere stuff. Also online buys are seldom delivered home, but to a nearby convenience store because work hours match delivery hours.

  Thinking of changing this distribution is highly disturbing because of time wasted, much more limited options and huge price differences. Of course YMMV depending on location, Madrid here... the world the article describes is totally alien to me.

  by narag
• I've rarely lived somewhere where I can't bike to a grocery store within 10 minutes. It's definitely something I look out for when picking a place to live. I can't imagine having to drive every single time and I dread the few times I do have to get in a car to get something
  by culi
• I understand the appeal, but let’s be honest. Costco is designed for rich people who think they are frugal. You drive your big SUV there to load up on months worth of food and goods, which you can only do because you have a big house with enough storage for all of it. And who cares if some of it goes bad because you can always go back for more and hey it was so cheap anyway. You even pay a membership for the privilege.
  by sholladay
• If you think "has an SUV and can buy food in advance" == "rich", then the billionaires truly have scrambled your brain.
  by kulahan
• I go for the $1.50 hotdogs

  (just kidding, but they are the best priced hotdogs anywhere! smart move by Costco even if it loses money on them)

  by insane_dreamer
• I know it's not your point, but the idea that SUVs have more cargo space is a myth. They are large cars with really thick hulls but they do not compete with station wagons, minivans, etc when it comes to cargo space

  https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/measured-c...

  by culi
• I’m not sure you have to be that rich to pay the $300 per year membership to buy food at loss leading prices. The bulk sizing of everything at Costco is overblown anyways. I wish it was bigger
  by whall6
• 46% of Costco shoppers are middle class (earning $40k-$125k) and 33% are upper class and according to market research companies.

  Membership is $65.

  You don't need an SUV to shop at Costco, it is easy to load the groceries into a sedan.

  by probablycorey
• I think average familiy could do better at financing so that they can affort to plan for 1 month or more on groceries. For me, it's not about rich, it's about planning, I must know exactly what I need before I go there. It save time and but stability, I have at least 1 month buffer on common goods shortage.
  by cavoirom
• Highly recommend the Acquired podcast and their Costco episode if people want to dive deeper into the history of this company.
  by scamdrill
• yep. super good. I've recommended it a ton.

  the one on Trader Joe's is also excellent.

  by gorfian_robot
• https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco
  by kejaed
• 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 additionally support the long tail of SKUs with a heterogeneous warehouse system (and heterogeneous profit margins).

  On the delivery side: US suburbia is just in general not a sustainable solution. Delivery is just one way in which it bites. Somewhere like NYC, the amortized delivery cost (internalized or externalized) is very low (and opposite to Costcos which require a drive to an inconvenient location).

  The bit about agents doing your shopping is falling for the same trap as crypto people thinking NFTs will kill Ticketmaster. These have never been technical problems: the APIs don’t exist for nontechnical reasons.

  by christina97
• Somehow Costco managed to get their store right in the middle of downtown Vancouver. They put it under some condo towers.
  by titanomachy
• I know that I trust products from Costco being good quality, I'm less likely to regret my purchase decision. I've been burned with stuff I got on Amazon being crappy.
  by thijson
• Costco is mostly food, clothes, furniture, other large things, and auto services, which generally you don't get from Amazon even if you aren't a Costco member. The points about less choice more apply to like Costco vs grocery stores or Walmart. And I do like Costco, similar low-choice reason I like Trader Joe's even though Costco is its own league.
  by frollogaston
• I think a lot of people buy furniture and clothing on Amazon. It's extremely cheap and easy to return, or just throw away if you can't return it (not endorsing that).
  by ironman1478
• As per their financials it’s roughly 50-50. I personally buy groceries and household consumables for the most part apart from the occasional electronics purchase.

  IMO Costco’s food hits the sweet spot between high end grocery store quality and walmart level price.

  by jitix
• The Trader Joe's model is an interesting comparison with the Costco model.

  Similarities:

  * Like you said, both have fewer choices than a conventional grocery store: if you want ketchup or peanut butter, there's only going to be one brand and one size.

  * Both of them don't have scales at the registers: unlike at a conventional grocery store, nothing is sold by weight (which I'm sure provides another small efficiency gain).

  * Both of them are cheaper than your typical grocery store.

  Differences:

  * I feel like Trader Joe's leans on store brand / white-labeling items more than Costco -- yes Kirkland Signature is a thing but Trader Joe's takes it further.

  * The shopping experience is pretty different both in terms of the in-store experience and the quantities things are sold in.

  * Costco requires a membership, Trader Joe's doesn't.

  I wonder which elements of the two models would work best for a public grocery store.

  by lemoncucumber
• Yeah I can’t get 5 different varieties of a ball bearings in the size I need delivered overnight from Costco. And for the things Costco or your local grocery store is great for, Amazon is often a far worse option. I noticed my wife was buying our toothpaste using a subscribe and save thing, so I compared it to our regular grocery store when I went shopping, and Amazon was like 20% more expensive. Great marketing on Amazon’s part getting people to assume it’s always the lowest price, but it’s often not.
  by DrewADesign
• This is about 80% spot on, but the last 20% fails to mention that you can avoid the in store experience if it isn't for you, and in fact get the stuff you want delivered to your door in a short period of time, using services like instacart. Costco even partners directly with instacart for same day delivery. You can use your membership to get same day delivery shopping on costco's website and they will use instacart to fulfill it for you. Or you can use instacart directly, in which case you don't even need a membership yourself.
  by furyofantares
• I honestly like the shopping experience at Costco -- there aren't a million variants of the same thing to choose from, you find really good deals sometimes (on already good prices), they have new random and sometimes good things all the time (I'll sometimes spontaneously buy, then confirm with my wife at home and if not, return on our next trip), and my kids go to the food court and enjoy the pizza and hot dogs that are decent quality and low priced. We go every ~2 weeks.
  by insane_dreamer
• True, but at higher prices (and with delivery fees), which somewhat defeats the purpose of the cost savings at Costco.
  by borski
• 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.

  by brailsafe
• I’m guessing you don’t have kids. My membership pays for itself just for the savings on string cheese alone. Same for eggs.
  by emtel
• Costco is a must if you have teenage boys :)

  the lack of choices for similar products is a huge plus for me - speeds up the shopping process considerably, and their curation is pretty good

  by insane_dreamer
• As a member, the gas savings pay the annual fee, and I get my staples from Costco every few months. Peanut butter, paper towels, TP, tissues, and sometimes mushrooms and washed greens.

  Everything else I'd rather get from my local grocery stores.

  by the-grump
• Agree with you on most angles but with a twist: the suburbanite should be seen not as the adult shopping, but as the children that the suburbanite is most likely shopping for. I’m certainly not going to be picky about the Greek yogurt when half of it will end up uneaten (or on the floor).
  by whall6
• 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?

  by quacker
• Costco stuff is quantity and quality
  by frollogaston