Warehouse club grocery savings or not?

[flintnational]

And the Amazon rotisserie chicken arrived cold and yucky the last time I ordered it.

The DW in the next room heard me laughing!

FN

 

[ncbill]

No BJs here, but after having both chose finally Costco over Sam's Club.

Produce lately hasn't been the best, but corporately they do treat their workers much better than the latter.

A local Whole Foods-style store (with more reasonable pricing) has become our go-to for meat & produce.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Grocery prices in our local area are coming down in general. Before I think Safeway felt safe just to be lower than Whole Foods. Now Whole Foods prices are coming down and the retail stores are matching but their prices are still often double instead of triple what I can pay for identical items at 99 cents and outlet stores. $100 saved on one shopping trip more than covers all my seat filler, movie, park, museum, theater group and other memberships for the month so we can go out most days for no extra fees. Monthly expenses have been much cheaper for us being retired and able to price compare and bargain hunt on both the food and entertainment fronts. Local prices are very high for us so the savings to shop 5 miles instead of 1/2 mile away for groceries have been huge.

 

[brett]

We shop at Costco. Not for everything it is still one of the primary go to places.

We also shop at Costco on line. Last purchases have been a king size bed and a high end leather recliner. Very happy with the experience.

One thing we especially like about Costco is their Kirkland brand products. And their return policy.

Like others, our membership cost is zero. Our Costco rebates more than cover the cost of our Exec. membership.

 

[eastnortheast]

Someone mentioned they find Costcos depressing. I find most Walmarts depressing. I don't find Costco depressing - well lit, not cramped, I can easily make a beeline to my favorite sections. Not a whole lot of staff around, yet if you do need help from an employee, they are obviously very well trained.

They have their cohort of buyers who do a lot of product testing, kind of like Consumer Reports, so the limited choices they give us means they have usually filtered down to the best value option, and I am rarely disappointed.

And they treat their employees much better, yet I still get great deals.

I am not a shopper who goes for the cheapest option. A lot of cheap stuff is junk. I want value for my money, and I will pay a little more for something if I think I'm getting better quality for that additional cost. Costco seems to be geared to my type of shopping, so they save me a heck of a lot of time as well as delivering good value to me.

I expect the membership serves as a filter for higher end customers like me. Fine by me as I get enough back on the executive rebate to way more than pay for my annual memberships, and that's not even counting the credit card rewards.

Costco has been very successful with their model, one of the few big retailers not suffering from online shopping. Amazon, I'm sure, has them in their sights. Funny that both are based in the Seattle area.

This pretty well sums up our reasons for shopping at Costco. There are certain intangibles that come into play, such as the way they treat their employees, etc. Cheapest is not always the best value, not from a holistic point of view or tangible point of view.

 

[Montecfo]

Wondering what OP meant by "the pain of switching". We routinely use Aldi, HT, Giant Food and BJs. Being retired, I do most of the shopping and just buy what I like best at each one. We do big shops at BJs for family dinners but otherwise just get specific items like coffee, soaps, toothpaste. I have to balance the savings at BJs against the stuff I wouldn't buy otherwise. We get $35 membership through Farm Bureau which also gets us discount at Nationwide insurance. Aldi is my favorite. We had little choice growing up but Safeway that dominated the market has closed many locations.

We do the same as there are so many stores near us (Costco, Sam's, Aldi, Food Lion, HT, Giant, Safeway, Wegmans) Costco has pretty good pricing on most things, but excelling pricing and higher quality on some. Some of the bulk items make no sense for us. Aldi is great for certain things, quality not as high. Walmart is a go-to but they have stockouts sometimes and meat is cheaper elsewhere.

I do think Costco is a good value, and we do not buy bulk.

 

[Sunset]

DW came home from Sam's today with rotisserie chickens. When she goes to Sam's, she always comes home with them. We eat one and she makes chicken salad out of the other. Probably cheaper than buying raw chicken and cooking it....and I think it's pretty good!

+1
Same here, Sam's means chicken.
Once I even got 4 meals out of it, nothing faster than one of their pre-mixed salads, with some rotisserie chicken cut up on top of the salad.

 

[Sunset]

Someone mentioned they find Costcos depressing. I find most Walmarts depressing. I don't find Costco depressing - well lit, not cramped, I can easily make a beeline to my favorite sections. Not a whole lot of staff around, yet if you do need help from an employee, they are obviously very well trained.

.....

For us, the Walmart is beside the Sam's so maybe that has an affect, but I have repeatedly told DW that Costco is better, nicer, cleaner and has staff that don't seem to have wandered over from Walmart to work.

Also even the clients seem nicer at Costco, vs our Sam's where most of the clients also seem to have come from Walmart.

I fit in if I don't shave for 3 days and wear one of my old t-shirts, and socks with holes in them .

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Recent article from CNBC discussing how Costco is cheaper than Whole Foods. And of course, clickbait is included in the title, "and the one thing millenials can't get at Costco."

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/cos...n-whole-foods-but-it-doesnt-sell-lacroix.html

 

[audreyh1]

Recent article from CNBC discussing how Costco is cheaper than Whole Foods. And of course, clickbait is included in the title, "and the one thing millenials can't get at Costco."

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/cos...n-whole-foods-but-it-doesnt-sell-lacroix.html

Well of course Costco is cheaper than Whole Foods. Whole Foods is a high bar! But Amazon may be changing that.....

 

[audreyh1]

Well of course Costco is cheaper than Whole Foods. Whole Foods is a high bar! But Amazon may be changing that.....

This is funny, because I'm pretty sure I've seen cases of Lacroix off and on at my local Costco:

But though Costco generally offers cheaper prices, there's a problem. The selection is limited. One missing item, and missed opportunity: the popular seltzer brand LaCroix, a cult favorite, particularly among millennials.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Well of course Costco is cheaper than Whole Foods. Whole Foods is a high bar! But Amazon may be changing that.....

Well, the article did go on to say that they were already cheaper than many of the traditional grocers, so it wasn't specific to Whole Foods (and they did note that some prices have already been lowered at WF after the Amazon buyout)...the story was very much polar opposite from what many folks here are reporting. Also, the numbers they use are from a study that was done by JP Morgan, so perhaps it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Personally, we go to Costco about once a month. I would say most of our spending there is for dry goods and household items. The food staples tend to be ground beef, chicken breasts, salmon and some fresh seafood. We have found that the beef, chicken and salmon (all the frozen varieties) are cheaper than what we can get at Kroger and Publix. We don't shop at Wal-Mart often (not very convenient) so I can't make a fair comparison.

I will admit that in the world of money spending, we don't pay too much attention on the grocery bill. It's just two of us, so even without watching it, we don't spend too darn much. Not only to mention, even being retired, I am still saving more money that I am spending, so saving a few bucks on groceries isn't a high priority.