Ok, yeah, I just looked it up. The closest Costco is a 55 minute trip from here. The closest Sam’s is 20.
The Costco I go to is less than two miles from my house. It is great for the TP, dogfood and things like that. However, as I noted upthread, I spend way too much money there, even if I go with a list.
The meat quality is usually excellent, as are the cheese selections. I loves me some cheese!
And, I was thrilled to discover they had NICE chanterelles in the fall. Since I hadn’t gone out to get some on my own, this definitely made things easier for me.
I’ve only recently discovered Havarti, but I found it at…Walmart! OMG so good…when I was sick last week, it was the only thing I could stand eating. So smmooth and creamy, even with a sore throat.
We’ve had a BJ’s membership for a while and we like them, but we just added Costco. I haven’t been on a shopping trip yet…we’ve only done recon for whether or not we wanted a membership. I can’t wait till we get our freezer! We have a wimpy side-by-side fridge and I can buy budget sized frozen stuff because I just don’t have room. We added Costco mainly for the bakery and meats.
Are the rotisserie chickens really 5 bucks? I buy rotisserie chix all the time. I can get a lot out of one of those birds. This weekend I stripped one down taking off the breasts to slice for sandwiches, used all the dark meat and what remained on the carcass of the breast to make pot pie and chicken salad, then made stock from the bones that I’ll make chicken noodle soup with later this week with whatever breast meat is left. Plus I get to make a chef’s snack out of all the yummy roasted chicken skin that my sweetie won’t eat. You can’t buy a raw whole chicken for a fiver anymore.
They are in both Kansas City and Chicago. Most of the rotisserie chickens I’ve seen were one half to one third the size of the CostCo one. They’re HUGE!
Depends. I can get a bag with two whole fryers for $6.99 at Price Chopper.
I shop at CostCo all the time even though I don’t drive. Instead, I use a very large external frame backpack. I have a second insulated pack mounted below the main pack for frozen food.
Don’t forget the Kirkland brand vodka. It comes in a 1.75 liter bottle. It’s not the cheapest, but there is something surreal about drinking a vodka which is the same brand as my winter jacket.
BJs is not as good as Costco, though it’s the same basic idea and has a nearly identical store layout. BJs has better selection (usually there’s two brands of each item, as opposed to Costco’s one brand) but you pay for it in higher prices. In fact, some of BJs’ prices are identical to Target’s.
It’s okay and nice for buying stuff in bulk, but it is more like Costco Lite than anything else.
My mother underwent sort of a “bachlorette renaissance” when my sister and I left for school. She said she’d hit Costco, get the roasted chicken, and eat on it for the rest of the week.
For NEO folks;
There is also a Costco in Mayfield Heights, OH. Just off if I-271 and behind Best Buy.
Now I’m sad. We haven’t got one - I’d have to drive to Charlotte. Sad face, sad face.
Didn’t stop me from buying a complete set of stainless-steel pots and pans… only $250!
I put it in someone else’s cart, then followed them to the checkout.
[sub]They were someone I knew, so it was okay.[/sub]
I’ve even bought my carpet at Costco.
Oh, yeah, the rotisserie chicken. Try though I might, I can’t roast a chicken to begin to equal the quality of Costco rotisserie chicken. One of these gives us lunch and a dinner or two.
And the prawns thing. When the shellfish kiosk dude is there, I always get a pile o’ white prawns. Not the black tiger ones; those are farm-raised and can sometimes taste muddy. The wild white ones are turned into a giant shrimp feast that night.
However, I vow to never buy Costco clothes again. They look good, they’re brand name, but more often than not, they don’t wash or last very well. Not for me, at least.
I buy their jeans (didn’t know they were wrangler)! they’re the ONLY local place that carries 40x34…everybody else thinks I should be fat and short (40x30), or tall and skinny (Well, actually, nobody sells 38x38)…and when people do, the Jeans are $60 a pair. Costco’s are $12.50 a pair.
How could I NOT buy every pair I can get my hands on?
Still too far. 
Even the Trader Joe’s on Chagrin is a little out of my way.
I’m kind of sick of the meme that everything at Costco comes in irrationally huge sizes. Some things come in normal sizes (like the rotisserie chickens or quarts of half-and-half) and others come in multi-packs of normal sizes. If I eat an average of one can of tuna fish a month, I’d rather buy an 8-pack than buy a single can every month at the regular grocery store. Much easier and more convenient. And Kirkland tuna is better than name brands anyway.
Besides, with certain things, who cares if they come in huge sizes as long as you have room to store them and you’ll use them before the expiration date? I take Claritin every single day. So I buy the generic bottle of 300 at Costco, which is like 1/4 of the price of even the generics at the regular drugstore. And why NOT buy your toilet paper 50 rolls at a time? I live in an apartment and don’t have very much storage space, but I do try to make room for certain things I buy in bulk like the TP. Who wants to bother with picking out toilet paper every time they go to the grocery store?
Sax!! What’s up? I thought of you a few months ago. I found out I wasn’t 1/4 Latvian like I’d thought all my life. I’m 1/2 Latvian. Who knew?
We always get the kids’ birthday cakes there too. Huge sheet cakes that are cheap and really good.
I buy the same claritin, and love it. But I also snoozed and lost on the Stokes Green Chili because I didn’t know how awesome it was and didn’t want to risk haveing 7 leftover cans if I didn’t. (Maybe it was a 6pack, I dunno)
There is only so much space in my life for 24 rolls of TP, 18 rolls of paper towel, 10 Lbs of Oatmeal, a 24pack of Top Ramen, a 4 box case of Poptarts, a 12 pack of Mac n cheese, and another 8 pack of chicken noodle soup.
It’s a meme with more than a pinch of truth to it.
Sometimes you can get around that problem when they pass out free samples. My parents take advantage of that a lot.
Our Costco has awesome frozen and packaged salmon, with a great sauce. Not too big a package also. And it has the best bread. Plus, the pastrami in the huge tub is as close to real pastrami as I’m likely to find around here, and much better than Safeway deli pastrami (cheaper too.)
However, I have enough spare head for my toothbrush to last me well past the time I have teeth, and the big box of microwave popcorn only needs to be repurchased every decade or so.
Our Costco is close, and we’d go more often if not for the shoppers. The same people who drive 35 in the left lane leave their carts in the middle of the aisles, or block intersections while their family of 12 gets free samples.
I go to Costco about once a week and normally drop around $75 on food for me and my wife.
Since I started going, it’s saved me on average $30 a week on our grocery bill.
The neat thing is, I go with a list, buy only the things on the list and head for the checkout. Costco is NOT someplace I’m inclined to indulge in impulse buys. I realize I’m the odd man out about this, but it’s probably the only thing that’s kept me from bankruptcy and divorce.
“I swear to god, if you come home with one more gallon tub of tuna I’m going to leave you,” kind of a thing.