[oezi]

I think the poster is indeed criticizing bulk shopping. I would then to agree that shopping in bulk makes it easier to overprovision or to have things go to waste or being bought superfluously. I am also not sure about it being cheaper in total because my experience with bulk sellers is that they achieve their profit margins by their product mix, so selling you some cheap items as loss leaders or discount items and recouping on others that you buy at the same time. Doing weekly shopping trips at different supermarkets can counteract that by letting you buy more various promotional items.

Of course it comes down to how much personal time you then have to spend on shopping to drive your bill down.

[rpdillon]

I've done the A/B test. Costco saves my family 25% across just food, ignoring other stuff I get there (batteries, shirts, jackets, shoes, underwear, deodorant, etc.)

You're pointing out that you need to plan properly to bulk shop, since you're necessarily modeling future consumption over days/weeks across multiple people, but that's different than over-consumption. It means you have to be analytical and plan, but that's exactly how we do it.

I despise the city living lifestyle, where folks jam themselves in tiny grocery stores to buy 2oz containers of jam and mustard because they don't have enough room to actually fit the food they want. My sister and dad live this way in NYC, and it's annoying as hell every single time I visit them. Wanna throw a meal together? First step: leave the apartment.

[adi_kurian]

There are four Costco's in NYC, all but one in working class neighborhoods, and full of large families getting deals.

[rpdillon]

Yeah, they're in Manhattan. Wasn't trying to paint NYC as homogeneous, just wanted to ground my opinions with experience folks can understand.

[adi_kurian]

I lived two blocks from a Costco in Manhattan for quite some time.

I totally get where you are coming from, just offering a counter. I have observed that the packed like tinned sardines is one kind of life, typically lived by transient folks who desire to live in the hippest neighborhoods, get gouged, live in shitboxes, and then move on and say "I needed more space and convenience", when the space and convenience was always there, just not next to an Equinox.

[tacomonstrous]

I know there's at least one Costco in Brooklyn