6 ms·

I want more costcos. To people who don't know, part of the core of Costco's business model is curation, which leads to customer trust. I know that almost any

I want more costcos. To people who don't know, part of the core of Costco's business model is curation, which leads to customer trust. I know that almost any product that I buy at costco is going to be high quality. I know that anything with a kirkland brand on it is going to be so high quality and so cheap that it feels like I found a cheat. What's funny about costco is that their in store experience is so good that they have seemingly ignored any sort of online presence. Yeah they have a website, but it doesn't seem to actually have a comprehensive list of everything they sell. You have to go to the store and check out what they have (and get a hot dog or a piece of pizza while you're there) If there was a delivery app that curated restaurants, I would absolutely love it, and I also think it would be really successful.

cma 4y ago
> I know that almost any product that I buy at costco is going to be high quality. Costco online is a different story though. They sell stuff like laser hair regrowth helmets and magnetic healing pads.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Even in store, they sell “medical” turmeric 100ft away at 1,000x the price of turmeric in the spice aisle.
jmacd 4y ago
I think that they don't show store inventory purposely. They still want you going in to the store and doing your Full Big Shop™ The Costco Grocery component of their website is actually pretty impressive. Quick shipping times and decent prices. Ordering non-grocery from the website still has a long lead time before the item actually ships.
- ok123456 4y ago
  This is good. I don't want some Gary V disciple deciding to do "retail arbitrage" full time---buying all the relatively cheaper products to sell on line.
trynewideas 4y ago
That was Caviar. DoorDash bought them at the start of the pandemic. It still runs, it's just DoorDash with a demographic tweak now. "Caviar’s platform architecture created value by focusing on a niche market that would drive a critical mass of users with only a few restaurants, allow for exclusivity to reduce multi-homing, and provide ancillary services for restaurants to reduce the barriers to entering the delivery business. Caviar launched with a relatively limited, curated assortment of restaurants that had loyal customer bases among food enthusiasts. With only 30 restaurants, Caviar had a small selection compared to its competitors, offering around one vendor per cuisine. Despite this, Caviar’s value proposition of “hype” restaurants attracted a different customer base that were willing to pay a premium to get delivery from these crave-able restaurants, many of which had never been available before on delivery. In addition, by onboarding restaurants new to delivery onto its platform, Caviar was able to sign exclusivity with many of its partners to reduce the multi-homing and creating stronger network effects with its users."[1] [1] https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/caviar-food-deliverys-race-to-your-doorstep/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/caviar-foo...
- lokar 4y ago
  I loved caviar in NYC. Cost a bit more, but in general higher quality restaurants (that did not list on other platforms). After they sold out it became DD with more bugs.
DrJaws 4y ago
Welcome to costco, I love you sorry couldn't help myself...
- mbg721 4y ago
  That all contributes to its image as a high-class discounter. That's fine, it just breaks apart where you say "Welcome to Aldi. You exist." Or "Welcome to Kroger, we love you as long as you buy the six things on sale, but after that we need to talk."
  - elmomle 4y ago
    I believe they were referring to this scene from Idiocracy: https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4 https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4
    - mbg721 4y ago
      Yes, I'm aware, but our brave new future, in its magnificence, has multiple grocery retailers.
samstave 4y ago
You've resurrected a memory in me... KOSMO.com - Back in ~1999 there was a site called KOSMO.com, and, in San Francisco it was basically "doordash" and sought to employ a ton of urban bicycle delivery folks. I bought my first on-line delivery from KOSMO and it was delivered to me by bike messenger within an hour. That thing was the movie DVD "RAN" by Kirosawa.... so shorlty after this, I was on a flight back east and was talking with a guy sitting next to me, and we were talking about KOSMO, and I said to him "You know what would be great, would be a heat-map of restaraunts that are within my radi of travel modes (like whats within a five minute walk and is indian food" I described this whole model I wanted from these new ways to deliver, order, pay.... Turned out the guy sitting next to me was one of the founders of KOSMO.com..... -- They went under pretty quick and never developed tech for "whats near me now", so that sucks. and to this day, with maps.FAANG everything and online order/delivery service Unicorns, I still dont have the perfect "map of shit thats near me as a heat map, based on what I am looking for and my mode of either transport/delivery" Maps are really good, but they are still simply "maps" I'd like a 'sentiment' layer on top of maps. --- An example would be: Show me the neighborhood [indian/mexican/whatever] restaurant, but show me traffic to and from, based on the radius of its customer-base So basically you can see how many people are flocking to a place.
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  > basically you can see how many people are flocking to a place. This has been tried many times and is basically illegal now so you will never have it. It always gets litigated for racism and shuts down. The best you will ever get is busy/not busy. Its also the same reason google will never direct you away from a very unsafe area in an unfamiliar place. Its the same reason no real estate site provides a crime stat overview.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    Litigated for racism? I genuinely do not understand how this could be possible. These services aren’t showing the race of the people attending, are they?
    - 4y ago
datavirtue 4y ago
Costco is shopping porn for the middle class affluent who don't know what else to do with their time. Consumerist.
avg_dev 4y ago
I just got back from a trip to Costco and I got a fair bit of stuff. As a consumer I do feel like I can trust them. A couple of tangents: 1. I have ordered things from the Costco website; one time it was a large TV that was cheaper there than anywhere else I could find it, most recently a couple of office chairs. Their web purchasing experience is similar to others I have used. 2. There seems to be some evidence that Costco may be perpetrating animal cruelty on a pretty big scale: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/23/costco-chicken-lawsuit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/23/costco-chicke...
_8j50 4y ago
I get Costco via Ubereats, I always order something and underestimate the amount. It took me months to finish one order of Chicken breasts for like 30-40$, each "breast" took days to consume. It really is amazing and the quality like you said has never been bad. Also, you can order random thinks like TVs or a tent via Ubereats. Fellow humans, I think we are at the peak of Capitalism.
Waterluvian 4y ago
> their in store experience is so good that they have seemingly ignored any sort of online presence. This is my experience with IKEA. Trying to have furniture bought and shipped was so painful and expensive that it was like they didn’t want to be bothered. I bought a set that was too big for my SUV. $2300. Still wanted $150 delivery, two week notice, and it was ultimately fulfilled by some mom and pop service. It was like IKEA decided, “we have one prescribed user experience but if you want us to find you a guy with a van to do the pickup for you, we don’t mind.”
LegitShady 4y ago
I don't really understand this, but it might be my local costcos. I hate every minute of my time at costco from entering the parking lot to leaving. I usually go for gas, since its cheaper. There's always a long lineup, 10 minutes or so. Then I go to find a parking space - which I usually try to cut short by parking far away, but costco lots around me are fairly small for the amount of business going on in the store and crowded. Every second in the store is torture. A mass of people who are all trying to get to wherever they're going. I dont' care about the little food tasting stations - the food sucks and I don't care about it. Items that were there the week before are suddenly no longer stocked at all, and finding boxes is pretty hit or miss. Some items don't have UPCs even though its required to get through self checkout, so self checkout is sabotaged by their own packaging. The mass of people are constantly in the way. The best part of costco is getting a hotdog on the way out, but in the last 5 times I've gone the wait for a cheap hot dog was ~15 minutes. I end up going for cheap gas and wasting an hour in line or trying to get to the few items I want to buy. If this is a so good store experience I have no idea where you normally shop. Every second of it is torture. Maybe if they had half the people in the store, it would be painful instead of unbearable, but thats not a thing. I don't really understand why people think its a good experience. It's like shopping elsewhere but with even more people around you and trying to get to the things you're standing in front of while you try to make decisions on what to buy, and longer lines. I don't know that I have a trust level with costco at all. they're just a store.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  Just go Monday or Tuesday evening, no crowds at all.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    I'll try. I haven't seen that yet but if its true it might make it somewhat bearable.
- ckdarby 4y ago
  > I don't really understand why people think its a good experience. Sounds like you're still going? That is very confusing reading your write up with multiple complaints and how there are better alternatives and nobody has time to wait to save a bit on gas. Can even have a better experience by not renewing the membership.

cma 4y ago

> I know that almost any product that I buy at costco is going to be high quality. Costco online is a different story though. They sell stuff like laser hair regrowth helmets and magnetic healing pads.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Even in store, they sell “medical” turmeric 100ft away at 1,000x the price of turmeric in the spice aisle.

jmacd 4y ago

I think that they don't show store inventory purposely. They still want you going in to the store and doing your Full Big Shop™ The Costco Grocery component of their website is actually pretty impressive. Quick shipping times and decent prices. Ordering non-grocery from the website still has a long lead time before the item actually ships.

ok123456 4y ago
This is good. I don't want some Gary V disciple deciding to do "retail arbitrage" full time---buying all the relatively cheaper products to sell on line.

trynewideas 4y ago

That was Caviar. DoorDash bought them at the start of the pandemic. It still runs, it's just DoorDash with a demographic tweak now. "Caviar’s platform architecture created value by focusing on a niche market that would drive a critical mass of users with only a few restaurants, allow for exclusivity to reduce multi-homing, and provide ancillary services for restaurants to reduce the barriers to entering the delivery business. Caviar launched with a relatively limited, curated assortment of restaurants that had loyal customer bases among food enthusiasts. With only 30 restaurants, Caviar had a small selection compared to its competitors, offering around one vendor per cuisine. Despite this, Caviar’s value proposition of “hype” restaurants attracted a different customer base that were willing to pay a premium to get delivery from these crave-able restaurants, many of which had never been available before on delivery. In addition, by onboarding restaurants new to delivery onto its platform, Caviar was able to sign exclusivity with many of its partners to reduce the multi-homing and creating stronger network effects with its users."[1] [1] https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/caviar-food-deliverys-race-to-your-doorstep/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/caviar-foo...

lokar 4y ago
I loved caviar in NYC. Cost a bit more, but in general higher quality restaurants (that did not list on other platforms). After they sold out it became DD with more bugs.

DrJaws 4y ago

Welcome to costco, I love you sorry couldn't help myself...

mbg721 4y ago
That all contributes to its image as a high-class discounter. That's fine, it just breaks apart where you say "Welcome to Aldi. You exist." Or "Welcome to Kroger, we love you as long as you buy the six things on sale, but after that we need to talk."
- elmomle 4y ago
  I believe they were referring to this scene from Idiocracy: https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4 https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Yes, I'm aware, but our brave new future, in its magnificence, has multiple grocery retailers.

samstave 4y ago

You've resurrected a memory in me... KOSMO.com - Back in ~1999 there was a site called KOSMO.com, and, in San Francisco it was basically "doordash" and sought to employ a ton of urban bicycle delivery folks. I bought my first on-line delivery from KOSMO and it was delivered to me by bike messenger within an hour. That thing was the movie DVD "RAN" by Kirosawa.... so shorlty after this, I was on a flight back east and was talking with a guy sitting next to me, and we were talking about KOSMO, and I said to him "You know what would be great, would be a heat-map of restaraunts that are within my radi of travel modes (like whats within a five minute walk and is indian food" I described this whole model I wanted from these new ways to deliver, order, pay.... Turned out the guy sitting next to me was one of the founders of KOSMO.com..... -- They went under pretty quick and never developed tech for "whats near me now", so that sucks. and to this day, with maps.FAANG everything and online order/delivery service Unicorns, I still dont have the perfect "map of shit thats near me as a heat map, based on what I am looking for and my mode of either transport/delivery" Maps are really good, but they are still simply "maps" I'd like a 'sentiment' layer on top of maps. --- An example would be: Show me the neighborhood [indian/mexican/whatever] restaurant, but show me traffic to and from, based on the radius of its customer-base So basically you can see how many people are flocking to a place.

citizenpaul 4y ago
> basically you can see how many people are flocking to a place. This has been tried many times and is basically illegal now so you will never have it. It always gets litigated for racism and shuts down. The best you will ever get is busy/not busy. Its also the same reason google will never direct you away from a very unsafe area in an unfamiliar place. Its the same reason no real estate site provides a crime stat overview.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  Litigated for racism? I genuinely do not understand how this could be possible. These services aren’t showing the race of the people attending, are they?
  - 4y ago

datavirtue 4y ago

Costco is shopping porn for the middle class affluent who don't know what else to do with their time. Consumerist.

avg_dev 4y ago

I just got back from a trip to Costco and I got a fair bit of stuff. As a consumer I do feel like I can trust them. A couple of tangents: 1. I have ordered things from the Costco website; one time it was a large TV that was cheaper there than anywhere else I could find it, most recently a couple of office chairs. Their web purchasing experience is similar to others I have used. 2. There seems to be some evidence that Costco may be perpetrating animal cruelty on a pretty big scale: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/23/costco-chicken-lawsuit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/23/costco-chicke...

_8j50 4y ago

I get Costco via Ubereats, I always order something and underestimate the amount. It took me months to finish one order of Chicken breasts for like 30-40$, each "breast" took days to consume. It really is amazing and the quality like you said has never been bad. Also, you can order random thinks like TVs or a tent via Ubereats. Fellow humans, I think we are at the peak of Capitalism.

Waterluvian 4y ago

> their in store experience is so good that they have seemingly ignored any sort of online presence. This is my experience with IKEA. Trying to have furniture bought and shipped was so painful and expensive that it was like they didn’t want to be bothered. I bought a set that was too big for my SUV. $2300. Still wanted $150 delivery, two week notice, and it was ultimately fulfilled by some mom and pop service. It was like IKEA decided, “we have one prescribed user experience but if you want us to find you a guy with a van to do the pickup for you, we don’t mind.”

LegitShady 4y ago

I don't really understand this, but it might be my local costcos. I hate every minute of my time at costco from entering the parking lot to leaving. I usually go for gas, since its cheaper. There's always a long lineup, 10 minutes or so. Then I go to find a parking space - which I usually try to cut short by parking far away, but costco lots around me are fairly small for the amount of business going on in the store and crowded. Every second in the store is torture. A mass of people who are all trying to get to wherever they're going. I dont' care about the little food tasting stations - the food sucks and I don't care about it. Items that were there the week before are suddenly no longer stocked at all, and finding boxes is pretty hit or miss. Some items don't have UPCs even though its required to get through self checkout, so self checkout is sabotaged by their own packaging. The mass of people are constantly in the way. The best part of costco is getting a hotdog on the way out, but in the last 5 times I've gone the wait for a cheap hot dog was ~15 minutes. I end up going for cheap gas and wasting an hour in line or trying to get to the few items I want to buy. If this is a so good store experience I have no idea where you normally shop. Every second of it is torture. Maybe if they had half the people in the store, it would be painful instead of unbearable, but thats not a thing. I don't really understand why people think its a good experience. It's like shopping elsewhere but with even more people around you and trying to get to the things you're standing in front of while you try to make decisions on what to buy, and longer lines. I don't know that I have a trust level with costco at all. they're just a store.

hnburnsy 4y ago
Just go Monday or Tuesday evening, no crowds at all.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I'll try. I haven't seen that yet but if its true it might make it somewhat bearable.
ckdarby 4y ago
> I don't really understand why people think its a good experience. Sounds like you're still going? That is very confusing reading your write up with multiple complaints and how there are better alternatives and nobody has time to wait to save a bit on gas. Can even have a better experience by not renewing the membership.