Ok, so 100 people can all drive to the store, or one delivery truck can drive to everyone's house. (Ignoring the packaging waste for a second,) I suspect delivery of single items cuts back significantly on trips to the store.

I live in Spain now and over here we have Mercadona as a "low cost market" and they do basically the same thing - limited selection of mostly in-house brands.

At first I was stlightly annoyed by it but over time it turned out that it's kinda preferred way -- indeed I waste less time hunting for The Brand and just The Item I need. And most of the time quality is on pair (or better) while costing less…

A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it.

I think it holds a lot of truth in engineering.

Having now lived a few years in the Netherlands, I much more prefer the ability to cycle/walk by one of the myriad of grocery stores in my day to day area and grab what I need for todays dinner.

Here membership is unusual in that it isn't technically open to everyone, it's business and certain professions: https://www.costco.co.uk/membership but in reality anyone who wants to join can find a way.

Also no mention in the article of non-food. In UK Costco is known for special offers on electrical and white good and more. And cheap car tyres iirc

In the UK not everyone drives like USA and Costco's are few and far between, so that limits who shops there. So a niche player compared to the Supermarkets for consumer shopping.

And people also have smaller homes compared to USA and smaller families maybe (or smaller portion sizes...!), and Costco here is more geared towards selling in bulk, and to corner shops and other small businesses. It's more of a hybrid Wholesaler.

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.

It all works, though the article mentions public stores and references military commissaries as an example. We can shop at the commissary if we want. We don't because the other stores I mentioned above cover all our needs better at a better price point.

I do not think the article's author understands the subject matter as well as they think they do and with the many political references to the current New York mayor; it may just be disguised political messaging article.

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.

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.

I'd much rather order some heavy stuff from Amazon to have delivered and walk to the local grocery store for everything else.

That further helps simplify shopping and decision-making and resolves the paradox of choice. Instead of having to sort through a wide variety of unknown brands on Amazon, they just go with KS.

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/costco-reveals-why-kirkland...

Costco do plenty of online only offers, partner with Doordash/Instacart, even sell holiday packages so I'm not sure how the author arrives at the conclusion they're at the "precise opposite of everything imagined by the e-commerce"

The only precise opposite is that they're still paying IBM goodness knows how much to stay on their AS/400 architecture.

Amazon and other delivery companies (e.g. Weee) came to the rescue. For a while I lived close enough to a Costco for a 20 minute bike, so I'd load up my gym bag full of food - even then Costco is not ideal because there's only so much you can carry (one thing of meat, one thing of eggs, some veggies).

For those that think Costco are the uber-shopping experience are missing that they both provide very opposite consumer experiences. (Yes Costco has shipping, and same day shipping, but it hits different from Amazon).

This is also opposite to corner store grocery systems where you can pop in at any moment to get fresh fruit, a wider choice, smaller quantities at more flexible hours etc.

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tldr - what I think I'm saying is that Costco is the perfect "suburban" purchasing experience - great if you tick the boxes that you have a big family (otherwise why do you need a 60 pack of toilet paper), a big house (where do you fit all that toilet paper), a car (to transport the toilet paper), etc.

anyone who don't tick those boxes can't really take advantage of any of that - so while Costco is amazing, it definitely shouldn't be the only way to shop.

The shipping is slower, but it’s an interesting part of their business, and I encourage Costco members to try it out. You’d be surprised at the quantity of things you really don’t need to go to the warehouse for.

For that is a large appeal of Costco. If I need a blanket, I can visit a Costco and buy their softest blanket with no hesitation. It will be around $20. If it’s bad, they have the most generous return policy.

When I was shopping for a water distiller there was only one large one but branded for ten different Chinese companies. (And They all had the same dangerous flaw where water could spill on the electrical plug.)

B. F. Skinner's Utopian Vision: Behind and Beyond Walden Two

[1]:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2778813/

It makes me want to check my purchasing habits to see if I'm around that mark.

You know you're old when...

1920's-era "kid on bicycle" tech could do that. Ditto any healthy local social network. I do it occasionally for less-healthy family & friends.

Or - how many housebound elderly folks are already using DoorDash & similar?

Bigger picture, the best practice would be a dedicated service for this. Staffed by Nurse Aides, who interacted enough with their clients to notice developing problems early. Because compared to occasionally cycling old folks through the hospital - for "easily treated, if noticed sooner" conditions - that would probably have a negative cost.

There’s no reason they couldn’t do basically all of the good things mentioned in this article plus have a functional website, let me scan and pay with my phone in store, have a handheld scanner at each register, etc.

Costco is an exploitative mega-corporation and Amazon is too. Ask a Costco enthusiast and they will say they do it out of the goodness of their heart. It's really annoying and makes me completely avoid Costco. Please, tell me again how you think Costco hotdogs were invented by Jesus Christ and how you love guzzling down their wieners.

It was a used car tier hard sell to get the “executive” membership, after saying no a half dozen times literally everything we said was an invite to highly recommended the damn executive card.

Then they offer $20 back on your membership if you sign up for auto pay (and install the costco app on your phone and give up your email and phone). But you need a card, and it can’t be Amex, Mastercard, or Discover, so of course the very highly recommendation is to get the Costco Visa. It has no annual fee and you get %2 back, and even if you don’t spend enough you'll get a minimum of $65 back, which is the difference between the regular card and the executive. So the executive card is basically a no brainer.

Well we couldn’t get the $20 back coupon and at this point im feeling like Costco isn’t as customer friendly as the internet says, but it turns out we can actually use discover (debit only) on the phone app. Even though honestly the executive card pays for itself, also the Costco visa has no annual fee you can just get it and never use it.

I ended up getting the plain gold star card, got some free samples and was thoroughly impressed with the $1.50 hot dog. But I think I hate this store, onboarding was such a shady process.

I’m probably the only person who would notice that. Sort of how Steve Jobs explained that a good carpenter cares about the backside of the dresser as much as the front, even if no customer will ever notice.

When you order your X, a van doesn't drive from Amazon's warehouse to your home and then back with only your order. The van takes a van-full (hopefully) from the warehouse, and makes many stops at many homes, businesses, etc.

That seems more efficient, in terms of fuel, climate impact, etc., than each customer making a separate round trip. Is there data showing it either way?

Oh how I would wish for this crap to be banned. By law. Simply put, at the scale of "you are even allowed to sell at large volume to Amazon, Walmart, ..." you aren't on equal footing with Amazon. You are subservient.

Contract law still builds on the idea that b2b contracts are made between roughly equal parties because that was how business was done back 200 years ago, and thus there's much less legal protection than for b2c contracts.

This needs to change, and the sooner the better.

That being said their refund and the way their employees is great though. I would prefer walmart if they treat their employee better and give better pay.

Just wait until Amazon turns some of its warehouses into Costco-style retail stores…