I agree, but the fact is probably that they don't want you to know. They want you to have to show up and end up buying stuff. They also continually rearrange their stores for no apparent reason, so you're wandering around looking for the same item you bought two weeks ago.
I like Costco, but have considered abandoning it because I'm sick of staple items I've bought for years there just... disappearing. You drive over there and start scouring the aisles for, say, brown rice. NOPE. They just don't have it anymore. And in many cases it's KIRKLAND products.
I understand that a supply of something might temporarily dry up, but then I wish Costco would replace it with the same thing from another supplier at full price if need be. Then at least I can get my shopping done without driving all over town. If I'm going to have to do that, screw it; I'll just go to the regular grocery store.
Costco staples aren't necessarily your staples; there are certain products that Costco has continually had in stock for more than the 20+ years I've been wandering the aisles in search of the Arc of the Covenant (I'm certain it's somewhere in there).
But other things that look like stapes can come and go, some seasonally, some after a few years.
Costco is a very "go first" store - you go there, get what you can, and then flesh everything else out at some other store that will keep things in stock even when they get pricey.
Costco is also not the cheapest, not by far, but they are the most consistent.
Butter and soda are two of the most noticeable for me, you can easily beat Costco on both, butter because local producers often supply local stores cheaper, and soda because it's a loss-leader in many places. There are others, find them!
Look up "staple foods" and it will be a rare list that doesn't START with (let alone doesn't contain) rice. But that was just one example of something that Costco sold for years, and then didn't have for years. They may have it again now, but I've given up wasting time looking for it there and now buy it at an Oriental-foods market.
I don't go to Costco "first" in most cases because trips there are far less frequent than regular grocery-store trips. I keep a separate shopping list for Costco, which includes the core items I've been buying there for years. When the list gets long enough, I make a special trip to Costco to restock. That's why it's infuriating to find that a bunch of the items have suddenly disappeared.
I will say that what remains on my list has been pretty steadily available for some time now, with occasional outages. There are quite a few Kirkland products on there. Their peanuts (in the white-labeled metal cylinder) are outstanding, for example.
Butter might be one of the best examples since it's one of the best things to buy in bulk to save on costs, and folks who cook use an epic amount of it.
I used very little butter living alone and not cooking more than an average American, if not substantially less. I then got married and now have a family where we are cooking at minimum one meal per night, including some baking.
I'd be surprised if we didn't go through 4lbs of butter per week on average at this point. We typically sub butter in for most oils, as those oils were subbed into recipes during the anti-fat crusades a few decades ago. When you do this your consumption increases even further.
If you tend to not cook yourself or avoid animal fats like the majority of people I could see butter usage not being that high.
Butter also freezes indefinitely, so having less than 90 day supply on hand (12lbs or so) just seems irresponsible to both my family and society as a whole. Keeping even just 30 day stores of staple products seems to be a thing of the past in the US, but I feel it's setting us up for tears.
Edit: Others have already said it, but Costco is actually fairly bad in general for commodity items like butter or rice where you don't care about brand. You will likely find far better deals on "generic butter" at your local restaurant supply store, or even just regular sales at your local supermarket. Ethnic stores for things like bulk rice will almost always be substantially cheaper as well. Costco is rarely the cheapest unit cost, but it wins on convenience.
Where Costco shines are the few specialty items they run through way more volume than most such as imported Kerrygold butter and that sort of "upscale" branded items. Their white label booze is also substantially cheaper for better than average quality as well.
>If you tend to not cook yourself or avoid animal fats like the majority of people I could see butter usage not being that high.
Yeah, I guess that's the rub for me. I will generally use olive/vegetable oil whenever possible and I don't cook to the extent where I have a bunch of unavoidable butter recipe's to begin with. I keep a small bin as a general "just in case" measure but I sometimes don't even go through that.
Also only have a small freezer, so the thought of freezing butter simply never occured to me.
What? Butter is one of the main things I get from Costco. It actually is cheaper than my normal grocery store in that case (I agree with the earlier post in the thread that Costco isn’t always the cheapest.)
I love butter. Especially the Irish butter that just tastes so much better than "normal" butter. Either butter is significantly cheaper at Costco than our grocery stores. I buy like 10lbs and it lasts a few months of cooking etc.
KIRKLAND is Costco's brand, it's a white label of a consistent reliable product. Your favorite brown rice brand could've ended up appearing as a kirkland product.
I'm surprised at the shortage of brown rice though, last time I went into Costco I was amazed at the sheer number of gluten free, keto friendly, organic friendly etc products.
Not brown rice, but I guess there is a shortage and now hoarding of rice happening[1]. India has supposedly banned the export of non-basmati white rice.
I guess this could impact brown rice supplies if people who can't get white rice switch to brown rice.
Not too hard to hoard rice. It doesn't require refrigeration and can be stored for a long time. Like toilet paper!
Its a wholesale club. Replacing an item at full price would be the complete opposite purpose of the store and membership. Its not about the available supply of a product, its about Costco using its purchasing power to buy the product at a cheaper rate in bulk. If the supplier changes the price that item it has to be re-evaluated.[1][2]
"If Costco feels the wholesale price of any individual product is too high, they will refuse to stock the product. For example, in November 2009, Costco announced that it would stop selling Coca-Cola products because the soft-drink maker refused to lower its wholesale prices.[96] Costco resumed selling Coca-Cola products the following month.[1]"
If you want brown rice in bulk for cheap, have you considered immigrant stores? I ask because I used to go to Makro (the Central European membership-based wholesale chain) for rice, but then I learned that shops serving Indian Subcontinent and Vietnamese diasporas offered rice and other nice things in bulk for prices comparable to that mainstream wholesaler.
Kirkland-brand stuff is generally relabeled products from various manufacturers, and usually picked from top-tier stuff; while the details are usually kept quiet, people have matched up 1-to-1 equivalents with other, more expensive products.
I like Costco, but have considered abandoning it because I'm sick of staple items I've bought for years there just... disappearing. You drive over there and start scouring the aisles for, say, brown rice. NOPE. They just don't have it anymore. And in many cases it's KIRKLAND products.
I understand that a supply of something might temporarily dry up, but then I wish Costco would replace it with the same thing from another supplier at full price if need be. Then at least I can get my shopping done without driving all over town. If I'm going to have to do that, screw it; I'll just go to the regular grocery store.