Hacker News

Yeah, this argument falls flat on it's face. Of course it's more complex than that.

When I worked from the office, centralized retail was very convenient and hardly added any driving. If you work from home, the opposite is true.

The next revolution would be to standardize reusable packaging, that same daily delivery truck could bring that back. But only government could make that happen.

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me.

Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things need to end up eventually to optimize costs. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Finally, Costco delivers if you really don't want to leave your house. Now we are back to the same model but with far more flexibility.

Those individual trips to the store are typically for more than single items, and are often incorporated into trips one would have taken anyways as part of the doing of errands.

It's a little my complicated than that though, I'm very rarely driving to the store for a single item.

When the Amazon truck drives down my street it’s always stopping at 5 houses or so. So the marginal cost of my package is practically zero.

It depends on the lived environment. In my US suburban house, a 20 minute drive from the warehouse/Costco, absolutely. In the Spanish town I am in, where I can do 10 errands in an hour ln foot, as basically every street level space is a store, and streets are themselves narrow, Amazon's logistics advantage loses to the Asian bazaar.

Also, in the photo, it shows a huge car park. The stores, have to support large empty spaces for parking of those 100 people all driving to the store. I also wonder about the social value of utilizing the land that way.

Perhaps this is just slightly oversimplified

Amazon goes to great lengths to make purchasing exceedingly easy and fast. And with Prime, customers can buy a single, low-priced item with no shipping costs, cf. the Costco requirement to buy in bulk quantities. As one would expect, this convenience and facilitation leads to more purchases. It also results in more packaging, more waste, more emissions, etc.

This was detailed in a 2024 Netflix documentary that interviewed a former Amazon VP who was fired for her environmental activism

https://www.netflix.com/title/81554996

She disclosed, brace yourself, that Amazon encourages people to buy stuff they do not need

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/former-amazon-employee-b...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/amazon-settles-with-employee...

Unlike Costco, Amazon does not disclose data on its environmental impact, e.g., carbon emissions. It's possible Amazon's impact is less than Costco's, Costco's data shows its impact is relatively severe, but if that were true, then why not share the data

Is driving to a warehouse, retrieving items in bulk, paying for them and driving the items home, i.e., offline shopping, as easy as placing an order on Amazon

Of course some HN reply will say "yes", implying that the former Amazon VP's story is false

Let the reader decide who to beileve

I never thought about it but doorstep delivery actually saves on emissions in a more optimized route. Interesting takeaway.

> Ok, so 100 people can all drive to the store, or one delivery truck can drive to everyone's house.

Whether you see that statement and read it as "obviously the delivery truck is better" or "obviously, going myself is better" is going to be primarily based on how far away from Costco you live, and how much you buy when you go.

I live a bit more than a mile away from Costco. I often buy 25-60 items, for each of the about weekly trips. There's enough large items that a normal delivery truck that could safely navigate and stop often in residential areas would have no change of fitting 100 people's purchases into it in a way to be easily offloaded (just the toilet paper and paper toweling would take up significant space). It's much less wasteful on almost all metrics for me to go to Costco. That's before we get into the fact that most of what I'm buying is produce and other food stuffs I wouldn't want shipped for worry they would spend longer than I wanted out of refrigeration.

If I lived an hour away that calculation turns out entirely differently, at least as long as there's enough people close by with purchases to gain efficiencies of travel.

> But to date it has still not been able to make the conversion away from being an online convenience store, which tells you something important about its model: Amazon is there to fill in the gaps of a dominant mode of goods procurement, not to replace it.

Either we can view single-packaged items as a gap in the goods procurement process, or we remove the means (Amazon) and view it as a forcing function to not have single-packaged items since a certain % of 100 people will start batching before they drive to the store.

Cuts both ways. When I go to the grocery store, I buy 30-40 items at once. When I buy them Amazon with Prime delivery, I usually order stuff piecemeal, in the heat of the moment. Sometimes, Amazon will consolidate two orders in a single package. Sometimes, they will ship a single order in three boxes that arrive in different trucks.

The argument is that people driving will each buy a lot though, not a single toothbrush. So 100 people driving will deliver as many trucks and would drive much less overall

I think online ordering is more wasteful because people order the wrong thing and don't know what sizes fit so they often buy multiple sizes and return or toss the ones that don't fit. This article where they buy a pallet crate of returned amazon clothing is pretty crazy- it was all polyester crap!

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/mystery-amazon-pa...

I saw commentary from a garment designer that there is enough clothing currently unused on earth to clothe the entire next six generations even if we completely stopped all production now.

At least in person people can try the stuff on and ensure it fits.

Came to say this, it would be hard to handicap this one. Shopping tends to be clustered, so if I’m methodical, I can go fill a car load with a lot of stuff and that might be more economical and environmentally friendly than the vans. But if I’m not, I could certainly see how it would be worse.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying it averages out to being better or worse.

For small items, add drones and the last miles savings get big.

  Weight of a typical car: 4,000 lbs. 
  Weight of a typical delivery drone: 80 lbs. 
  Typical drone payload: 5 lbs.
  5 mile drone delivery: ~2 kWh
  5 mile car delivery: ~100 kWh

It might, but I go to Costco every 3-4 weeks. If I depended on Amazon for everything I'd be getting multiple deliveries per day because there is no disincentive to doing that.

Judging Amazon's social value by delivery efficiency is just wrong.

Amazon's biggest benefit is that anything can be sold there. So now more problems in my life could have a solutions I can buy.

As for the delivery? There are more efficient ways to send deliveries. People can pickup deliveries at work or the gas station on their way home.

People don't care. How is that Amazon's fault?

For the average person an Amazon package has amazingly lower emissions than driving to the store.

I'd be curious further upstream as well. How would it compare from whatever shared point of entry the two approaches would have, say from coming off a boat at a port to the end user rather than just comparing the last mile.

It should be, "One delivery truck drives to several manned neighborhood drop-off points a couple of times a week, and 100 people walk to those points and walk home with their packages." Central distribution points that you have to drive to are as untenable long-term as everything being delivered individually.

Frankly, this goes for food delivery, too.

costco buyers typically buy in bulk and fill a pantry in one go. i doubt one truck can fill 100 pantry. maybe a few products each

> I suspect delivery of single items cuts back significantly on trips to the store.

Amazon is also specifically incentivized to be efficient at scale, it impacts their bottom line to the point where they care about the shape of their vehicles. Individuals don't operate on the same scale so these sort of micro-optimizations don't happen.

Amazon's logistics and approach discourage bundling, while Costco's in-store approach incentivizes it.

So it's more like 100 people drive to Costco, and they each buy 20 items and drive home. Or one Amazon delivery truck makes 1000 separate deliveries over the span of a week, because those 100 people made 10 different orders each, only ordering 2 items at a time. (I've even run into the situation where two separate Amazon orders made on the same day [because I forgot something in the first order] will arrive two days later, on two separate trucks, at two different times of the day.)

This part bears repeating in a different way: if I go to Costco and get 20 items, I drive there and back once, on one day. If I order like people typically do on Amazon for those same items, I have a truck/van visiting my address 5-10 times on a bunch of days over the span of two weeks.

How many items does the average consumer buy when they go to the store? It's not one.

great for specialized items you want to pay premium for, awful for paper towels

Carbon offset credits bought by Bezos' Yacht holdco.

Costco's trademark is pretty large minimum size containers which reduces transportation costs.

Back in the day people weren't driving to Walmart or whatever all the time to pick up a thing they wanted/needed, they would do that if they needed it right away, but if they didn't they would just wait until they were already in the store for a weekly trip, or pop in if they happened to be driving by on some other errand they needed to run

But most people go to Costco for bulk buys. amazon deliveries are almost daily sometimes multiple a day and STILL have the same giant trucks dropping off product at distribution centers.

Prices tell this activity is very efficient and not burdensome on society.

It’s much more complicated than that.

In a society where everybody is already driving to school, work, food, shopping medical appointments, gas stations, kids sports, etc this is just a marginal additional trip for the consumer.

Having redundant logistics companies (USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon, WalMart, Uber, etc) all making deliveries optimizing for something other than _minimum distance traveled_ means they aren’t optimizing for the same thing the consumer would.

Also, there is the game theory aspect. When a consumer mentally thinks they can just make a $5 purchase on Amazon and get it delivered the next day “for free”, they are less likely to take care to shop in bulk / batch their purchases. Nobody goes to CostCo for a $5 trip (except for the weirdos who go there just for the hot dog / pizza lunch). I personally don’t like the hassle of CostCo for less than a $200 shopping trip.

This has to be astoturfed or something. There is literally a Costco in Manhattan and several in suburban Queens and Staten Island. Nothing stops you from going to Costco and just getting a cab back for a once a month trip.

Costco also delivers -- I also live in a city in an apartment and order bulky things I don't want to carry from Costco online.

I wish cities should design a delivery railroad. I don't want to let food delivery robots take over pedestrian spaces and having standardised package sizes and weight limits would help make things efficient.

Don't know what I would do without Instacart.

Closest Costco is 1 hour on a bus or 22 minutes/9 miles driving. The Wegman's that delivers to me is 40 minutes/26 miles driving, all for a like 10-20% fee on every item. Honestly I'm surprised more people don't use it considering how much time they waste going to these places, and how much more they spend by walking through the stores in person. Sometimes I'll get the receipt and the price will be more than what I paid after delivery fee/tip.

I'm sad the 80$ for 100$ Instacart giftcard deal at Costco is gone. And the $2 off scheduled delivery. At least uber eats/doordash/walmart+/whole foods keeps this market competitive. Wonder how much trader joe's would make if they turned on deliveries?

Both spectrums are hard. Solving last mile is really really hard, but if you do that's a huge moat (aka Amazon). If you avoid last mile, you best deliver value in some other way, which Costco does by giving you more per dollar than anyone else.

It’s also amazing how bad delivery services are in general. The incentives for third party delivery services don’t align well with the other parties. A retailer is judged on the quality of delivery yet only amazon has seemed to realize this (queue incoming anecdotes about amazon screwing up delivery yet i’ve never had an issue getting a refund when it happens).

Avoiding a problem doesn't necessarily make the problem go away.

A wise person knows when to avoid a problem and when to solve it.

But they don't avoid solving it, they offer it by partnering with instacart.

It seems costco can deliver HEAVY things that amazon can't (economically, afaict)

i mean its a value exchange, the last mile matters a ton to the consumer, the value prop the average person gets from amazon vs shopping in 2000 is insane and scales up the more valuable your time is.

Not only are prices good, but if i lose my remote or need a shovel for the winter or whatever in 2000 im going to a store for that, that 15m of my time each way+parking+less choice.

Lets say i make $50 an hour, and lets say i value my free time at my working rate (i'd argue most people by definition value it more or they'd be working more hours).

Saving me 10m in the store 15m of driving both ways and 2-3m of transit is worth more than most items i purchase.

Amazons solved the last mile problem by having one vehicle bring each item to each home so its marginal cost of delivery is the distance between each home instead of the round trip between home and return that a customer has.

The more items you buy at one store the less valuable this is, which is part of why costco is well served by having such large product sizes.

It's also different demographics. Costco shoppers have always been in the highest income brackets, while Amazon's are middle of the pack and Walmart's tend to be at the lower end [0][1].

[0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-shoppers-richer-than-...

[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-sams-club-shopper...

I hear this, I have been in plenty of meetings where I propose a solution that eclipses most of the project requirements, often for a product person to turn around and say something like “yeah but I like working with X techhnology”, for example Tailwind.

Okay you like Tailwind because you seem to think “p-2” is better than specifying “padding: 2rem;” because when it comes time to tinker with things you don’t want to understand CSS, you want to play with Tailwind.

Sounds Costco not paying for externalities.

Incredible quote, thank you for posting it

They don’t avoid the problem. They avoid solving it and let it be your problem.

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

Wow, what a great quote!I think that this combined with "there is no free lunch" explains a lot of thing (IMO)

(I like to write and once I write, I like to send it free on the internet in the spirit of how older internet must've originally intended but if you wish to read the TLDR it is: Be wise in selecting the problems to be clever at!)

I think that this holds a lot within career-making as well, in terms of deciding what career that you want. For example, I think that sometimes I get hyper-focused on a topic and basically dig the weeds and every information about a particular topic. My recent obsession was with the dot com bubble and supply chains.

but at the same time I think that although its just good thinking about it and gives me more breath of knowledge which helps me form a more nuanced person, but that doesn't mean that for every interest that I have, I have to become the expert or a genuine professional career at it.

Some problems are worth the risk/tradeoff when thought from short term but they quickly become really painful over the long term whereas other problems are more fulfilling long term but really hurt short term and there is a balance within the middle which I have selected which is what's know as CS :-D

I am a somewhat frugal guy and my philosophy has always been of do it yourself but reading about supply chains makes me realize just how interconnected we are. A toilet making company in Japan is an irreplacable component within the AI industry (They make the ceramics sheets on which the wafers are built and they are the only company that have the genuine expertise, patent and skills for doing so and they aren't alone and there are many many companies within such thing)

and even a single aluminim screw-esque component could take like 4-5 turns from australia (mining) -> iceland (cheaper energy) -> China (making proper aluminum bars) -> Vietnam (cheaper labour than China so China itself is offshoring it) -> Back to China.

All while a software engineer from say India/America/Europe is making the website and handling the customer service and taking ad decisions/marketing while another MNC (Amazon) ships it to your doorsteps, a company can be formed anywhere nationwide, and the product could be gone to LATAM.

Basically, although I have gotten on a tangent, my main point is that not every problem has to be solved by you. the world has lots of money in every fields as its just soo interconnected and as such you should decide on the problems which are best worth your time, your expertise and your interests hopefully and tackling that problem and maybe even being clever at that! and being wise in avoiding many of other problems.

Be wise in selecting the problems to be clever at! but to be wise on selecting the problems you want to be clever at, you should be aware of other problems in the first place so its good to analyze more problems, though it could very well be a justification that I might provide myself when I am studying supply chains and the humble container, I also find it interesting how the concepts of containers become so intuitive once you know it in modern shipping and then we applied that same concept AGAIN in Docker/podman but before that time, we were none the "wiser" :-D

Agree 100%. Costco exemplifies american dream... recent immigrants perusing well-stocked aisles, friendly employees, ample parking, cheap tasty hot dogs, etc.

To note, Costco doesn't make much sense in most places outside of the USA (and doesn't have to. No shop needs to cater to the whole world).

It still exists in select locations in some countries, but are more exotic experiences than anything else. Shopping for weeks of groceries at a time is IMHO crazy niche, it requires a level of isolation and buying power that is seldom combined.

I tend to think of veterans and their sacrifices manning those battleships, fighter jets and battlefields so that companies like Costco can exist.

I think of this: https://patrickcollison.com/fast

Sadly this is not the case anymore these days.

Wallmart is absolutely impressive. But many places have something similar to Costco.

They're shifting around 1,000 corporate roles from Issaquah to Hyderabad [0]. They're across the street from TJX and AMD [1].

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/us-retail-giant-costco-s...

[1] - https://maps.app.goo.gl/?link=https://www.google.com/maps/@1...

I mean, Costco is great, but I think the purest expression of American capitalism is Buc-ee’s.

Welcome to Costco, I love you.

"[W]hat earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?"

> Here membership is unusual in that it isn't technically open to everyone, it's business and certain professions:

Price Club, a Costco predecessor was the same way.

In the early 1990s, Walmart (Sam's Club) wanted to merge with Costco. Costco said no and merged with Price Club.

FWIW you can use your US membership in the UK.

I ordered a dishwasher from Costco UK last week.

USA Costco does also have a business wholesale side

That's interesting, what do people have to do to get membership?

Why do you need to visit Costco every week? This feels like the most inefficient combination of the city-style "shop small quantities often" and suburb-style "buy everything in bulk once a month".

> ...it may just be disguised political messaging article.

It doesn't seem to be particularly for or against the NYC proposal to me, so I don't understand why you are suggesting this.

True, but at higher prices (and with delivery fees), which somewhat defeats the purpose of the cost savings at Costco.

I honestly like the shopping experience at Costco -- there aren't a million variants of the same thing to choose from, you find really good deals sometimes (on already good prices), they have new random and sometimes good things all the time (I'll sometimes spontaneously buy, then confirm with my wife at home and if not, return on our next trip), and my kids go to the food court and enjoy the pizza and hot dogs that are decent quality and low priced. We go every ~2 weeks.

> "The happy suburbanite cares about convenience and quantity above all else, from what I can tell anyway. They don't really have a varied sense of taste, they just want stuff, and they want easy access to that stuff. They like a "haul" that they do once a month, and buy vehicles that will fit it."

This is not reflective of the Costco shoppers I know and the place Costco fits in their lives.

Bi-Rite and Erewhon or Citarella and Eataly are not Costco competitors.

To understand the appeal of Costco to suburban families, you have to understand their caloric needs. Costco is the best solution if you need to buy 48 eggs and 4 gallons of milk a week along with 8lbs of chicken, 4lbs of turkey, and pounds of broccoli, green beans, spinach, sweet potatoes, onions accompanied with apples, peaches, mangos, avocados, blueberries, strawberries and oranges.

I don’t need “a varied sense of taste” to save money on gas and non-perishables.

I don’t need “a varied sense of taste” to budget and do simple math to determine the membership is worth it.

Babies don’t need “a varied sense of taste” to use diapers purchased from Costco in bulk at a great price.

Do I lack a “varied sense of taste” when I buy ingredients from Costco, like chicken thighs and rice and eggs and olive oil, and cook them at home?

As a member, the gas savings pay the annual fee, and I get my staples from Costco every few months. Peanut butter, paper towels, TP, tissues, and sometimes mushrooms and washed greens.

Everything else I'd rather get from my local grocery stores.

Costco is a must if you have teenage boys :)

the lack of choices for similar products is a huge plus for me - speeds up the shopping process considerably, and their curation is pretty good

The nice thing about Costco's stuff is that it's typically pretty high quality too.

Honestly I wouldn't say Costco is terribly convenient, other than the limited selection.

Costco stuff is quantity and quality

Agree with you on most angles but with a twist: the suburbanite should be seen not as the adult shopping, but as the children that the suburbanite is most likely shopping for. I’m certainly not going to be picky about the Greek yogurt when half of it will end up uneaten (or on the floor).

I’m guessing you don’t have kids. My membership pays for itself just for the savings on string cheese alone. Same for eggs.

Costco does deliveries like most grocery stores, so you don’t need a car

Yeah I can’t get 5 different varieties of a ball bearings in the size I need delivered overnight from Costco. And for the things Costco or your local grocery store is great for, Amazon is often a far worse option. I noticed my wife was buying our toothpaste using a subscribe and save thing, so I compared it to our regular grocery store when I went shopping, and Amazon was like 20% more expensive. Great marketing on Amazon’s part getting people to assume it’s always the lowest price, but it’s often not.

The Trader Joe's model is an interesting comparison with the Costco model.

Similarities:

* Like you said, both have fewer choices than a conventional grocery store: if you want ketchup or peanut butter, there's only going to be one brand and one size.

* Both of them don't have scales at the registers: unlike at a conventional grocery store, nothing is sold by weight (which I'm sure provides another small efficiency gain).

* Both of them are cheaper than your typical grocery store.

Differences:

* I feel like Trader Joe's leans on store brand / white-labeling items more than Costco -- yes Kirkland Signature is a thing but Trader Joe's takes it further.

* The shopping experience is pretty different both in terms of the in-store experience and the quantities things are sold in.

* Costco requires a membership, Trader Joe's doesn't.

I wonder which elements of the two models would work best for a public grocery store.

As per their financials it’s roughly 50-50. I personally buy groceries and household consumables for the most part apart from the occasional electronics purchase.

IMO Costco’s food hits the sweet spot between high end grocery store quality and walmart level price.

I think a lot of people buy furniture and clothing on Amazon. It's extremely cheap and easy to return, or just throw away if you can't return it (not endorsing that).

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco

yep. super good. I've recommended it a ton.

the one on Trader Joe's is also excellent.

I think average familiy could do better at financing so that they can affort to plan for 1 month or more on groceries. For me, it's not about rich, it's about planning, I must know exactly what I need before I go there. It save time and but stability, I have at least 1 month buffer on common goods shortage.

46% of Costco shoppers are middle class (earning $40k-$125k) and 33% are upper class and according to market research companies.

Membership is $65.

You don't need an SUV to shop at Costco, it is easy to load the groceries into a sedan.

I’m not sure you have to be that rich to pay the $300 per year membership to buy food at loss leading prices. The bulk sizing of everything at Costco is overblown anyways. I wish it was bigger

I know it's not your point, but the idea that SUVs have more cargo space is a myth. They are large cars with really thick hulls but they do not compete with station wagons, minivans, etc when it comes to cargo space

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/measured-c...

If you think "has an SUV and can buy food in advance" == "rich", then the billionaires truly have scrambled your brain.

I go for the $1.50 hotdogs

(just kidding, but they are the best priced hotdogs anywhere! smart move by Costco even if it loses money on them)

I know that I trust products from Costco being good quality, I'm less likely to regret my purchase decision. I've been burned with stuff I got on Amazon being crappy.

Somehow Costco managed to get their store right in the middle of downtown Vancouver. They put it under some condo towers.

I've rarely lived somewhere where I can't bike to a grocery store within 10 minutes. It's definitely something I look out for when picking a place to live. I can't imagine having to drive every single time and I dread the few times I do have to get in a car to get something

A major upside to Costco is you can actually see stuff and you also can walk out of the store same-day. Also I never ever worry about the counterfeit and/or low-quality crap you inevitably get from Amazon. And if Costco sells me something crappy, I drag it back in and don't even have to start up the printer (it's a zombie at this point). Costco has a running rule that they never charge above 10% in profits so I know I'm getting a good deal too.

What about the price-quality aspect? Costco blows Amazon away here IME. Plus there's the fact that someone can become an employee of Costco out of high school and spend their entire career there, with decent wages and benefits. That's not happening at an Amazon Prime fulfillment warehouse.

You can order from Costco on Instacart here in the Bay Area. This said, there's a lot of quality stuff at Costco (besides their huge wines collection) that you can't find anywhere else.

As someone who finds ordering groceries obscene what kind of heavy stuff do you get that you need to order in?

Your last sentence is literally the tragedy of the commons.

Over-consumption? That doesn't follow. I sustain my family on Costco, going once a month or so, but have to feed four people, including two teenagers that consume way more than 2000 calories a day. You keep using the word "oversized", but that assumes the SUV, the fridge, the trolley are not suited for purpose. But they are!

I think what you're really critiquing is people who don't shop frequently, and therefore buy in bulk.

If you don't like American over-consumption you can go to Carrefour and try out French overconsumption where people load up oversized trollies with corporate food to take to their SUVs in the overflowing parking lot... in France.

Are you under the impression that it is a uniquely American trait to have a bigger house than you need, more car than you need, and a penchant for corporate food? Over-consumption is human nature, not an American invention. America just happens to be able to afford it on a scale that most countries can't. Go to the poorer countries on earth, and you will still see people over-consuming if they have the means.

Maybe it isn't even overconsumption. Maybe it's just a different way of getting things done. Do you think that the people that buy Costco sized packs of toilet paper wipe their ass unnecessarily? Or maybe they just make fewer trips to the store to buy toilet paper.

If that's the only thing you can find to dislike about Costco, then they are indeed the saints of the retail world.

Costco is one of the few stores in America that attempts to give great value to consumers. Most supermarkets just don’t

Enforcing appropriate sized consumption is a terrifying thought.

Because of the large quantities my family with 4 children is able to go to Costco once a month and purchase almost everything our family will need for the entire month this means we only need to go to the store one or two additional times during the month for things like milk and bread.

Saying that everyone eating there is indulging in overconsumption is a ridiculous overgeneralization. Not to mention people that are planning parties, bbqs, get togethers etc. Just because you can't think of any reason for people to need large portion sizes besides overconsumption does not mean others are so limited in their imagination.

> to take back to their oversized fridges and storage basements.

It's really awesome to have plenty of food storage, with extra and oversized refrigerators, and a deep freeze too.

I keep mine full of vegetables and beef - I have a whole beef slaughtered annually.

Can you explain why this is a bad thing or why it means overconsumption? Why is the stereotypical "European" method of going to the store every day superior to me spending ~10 minutes once every two to three weeks to go to Wal-Mart? What do you do when there are shocks, like weather events, power outages (my generator will tide my fridges over, but will take down a store POS terminal), civic unrest, or pandemics? Or if you're just plain busy? I really appreciate being able to be fully stocked (with rotating backups so I am never actually out) of basically all foods and home staples (like TP). What's the downside?

What sizes of SUV, trolleys, fridges, and storage basements would meet with your approval?

UPS, Fedex, and Amazon all use USPS for some last mile deliveries. It's usually a little less when using UPS and Fedex; not sure if Amazon bills less for it because I use prime shipping so the cost is hidden.

Biz idea for you. Make that as an external site using Amazon associate.

Time and motion/Taylorism is an anti pattern for staff retention. There is more to work than pay. Being humiliated and hassled over pee breaks for instance.

> you're not allowed in the building without a membership

I wonder why other stores like Target don't do that as well. Beyond the obvious, it just seems like the way to go.

Cars & car parts, food, gas and clothes are still purchased almost exclusively in person. Those are each a massive percentage of spending.

https://www.census.gov/retail/marts/www/marts_current.pdf

This surprised me too. My apartment hallway has 5-10 amazon packages in it per day. I guess... everyone's just spending crazy money at home. Seeing the other comment about large purchases being made in person makes sense, but still - you can buy cars and clothes online now. 17 seems REALLY low!

> a functional website

It works for me. Am I holding it wrong?

> let me scan and pay with my phone in store

That's already beginning to happen: https://www.cheapism.com/costco-scan-and-go-technology/

> have a handheld scanner at each register

I've seen handheld scanners at each Costco register that I've ever paid attention to.

Very few people are shopping at Costco for their tech stack.

And maybe it's just their talented/experienced/numerous staff, but my in-store experience with their tech is as good as it gets. Stuff just works, and works quickly.

I agree IKEA is my cathedral. Aldi Süd is my shrine.

You should look up choice paralysis if you think that less choice being good is somehow "'brainrotted'".

You can sign up online, which you should have done, the guy you were taking was doing his job.

Thanks for an interesting comment! (No irony intended).

Here's one study sort that answers your question

https://news.umich.edu/carbon-emissions-and-grocery-shopping...

In-store pickup using a internal combustion engined vehicle produced more emissions than any other option studied.

Also this argument is easily refuted by the US Postal Service, which physically delivers individual pieces of paper in a few days, for pennies.

There's also the externalities. Costco effectively supports car infested surburbia which lots of people blame for a great many problems.

I would expect Amazon to be more efficient. Besides the round trips, there's operating the store, putting items on display, all that. As I said above, Amazon and Costco don't compete so directly though, like you aren't buying a pie from Amazon.

Indeed true. Even more efficient is when people can wait a few days and let Amazon bundle your orders and deliver on a designated day.

That said people don’t typically get in a car to buy one thing -though obviously sometimes they do. On average though their trips will be for multiple things. I still think even without using designated delivery days Amazon deliveries are more efficient than individuals going out to buy things independently.

Why? Then we’d have to pay more to buy stuff.

Comparatively, as I have both a Costco and Sam's Club memberships, the floorplans on Costco stores are much more efficient. Both stores get crowded but Sams suffers from poor design which makes traffic worse. Although, Sams does compensate with a smoother checkout experience.

Part of the reason their prices are low is they are very efficient at using their total hours open.

I often just get it delivered to my house to avoid the crowds though.

That's because of "them". If they weren't here.

Them is a universal variable you already injected.