I don’t live near Costco. What am I missing?

Plenty of stuff in Bulk.

$60 a year membership. Some stuff is cheaper but other stuff is not so you need to know your prices.

Generally the meat is a little cheaper but remember that you are getting it in bulk so probably not a huge amount cheaper. I find the Pork Ribs are a lot more meatier than what are available elsewhere. They are "Sunpork" brand. If you can find that brand elsewhere you will know what I mean.

For stuff like Toilet Paper, Washing Powder etc... it is better than colesworth but again thats because you are buying in bulk.

Helps to know the prices before you go and it is easy to get carried away when you are there.

BBQ stuff is random when you are there it changes all the time. One week they will have Pellets then the next week there are none.

G’day

There’s only me and my wife nowadays, my kids are now men and have long since left home. Got taken to Costco by some friends that have 3 kids.

Thier trolley filled up pretty fast and ours more slowly. I remember Massive block of cheese and tinned goods that we never use among other things. It was good to buy up on things you can’t always find like Stubs bbq sauce and huge bottles of hot sauce. Meat I did buy as we have freezer room and it was great quality. Big bails of toilet rolls that would never fit in the cupboard except unpacked and fitted one by one. The laundry detergent came in huge boxes with plastic carry handles. Recon it was full of fillers and you used more so it wasn’t as good value as you’d think.

When you do go. Don’t go hungry and realise the trolleys are huge!

Regards Dave

I don't think the meat is cheaper than a decent wholesale butcher, although sometimes there are good deals. Toilet paper etc can be good there, but as said above, not always so know your prices. Paper towel for example tends to only be cheaper if it's on sale.

Some stuff is hands-down cheaper - 30 free range eggs for $9-10 is hard to beat.

It can be tricky to compare some things though because the sizes are different. Milk in in 3.5L bottles instead of 3L, so you need to actually know the price/L.

I don't think I'd bother with Costco if it wasn't so convenient for me (it's on my way home from work).

i'm a bit the same nowadays, it was good at first but then some of my favourite items started disappearing especially during the past 2 pandemic years.

First i absolutely loved the large powdered Idaho Potato mash, omg that stuff was awesome and make a lot of mash per packet but it was the taste of the Idaho potato that i loved so much but they stopped bringing it in 2 years ago which almost made me cancel my membership, but.....i found a box of it 4 weeks ago at a Costco in Chiba, Japan....i was in heaven but the wife stopped me at 1 box and I had to share it with Sister in law.

Then Costco Australia stopped bringing in Mr Yoshido Wing & Rib sauce.....that was my favourite goto BBQ sauce...

There's a lot to like and a fair bit not to like.

Great pork ribs and pork in general (belly etc.). Great tomahawk steaks and other beef cuts if you can accept grain fed.

The lamb box is great value.

From time to time they have Rodriguez sausages which are good.

Their chicken is bad (steggles) to average.

Very good selection of breads.

Good selection and price of cheeses. (awesome sliced provolone cheese and fresh buffalo Mozzarella at a great price relative to other buffalo mozz).

Lots of products that you won't find elsewhere. Such as an excellent frozen spanakopita.

Men's clothes are brilliant value. As are shoes.

BBQ stuff is often great value. Such as the masterbuilt 800 and the many other bbqs they sell cheap.

The key is convenience. If you go on the weekend, you're asking for a painful experience. On a weeknight it's smooth sailing. It's also better in combination with smaller shopping at colesworth.

Many products are not bulk buys, so that's only necessary if you're trying to avoid shopping elsewhere.

I've wanted to do the lamb box, but for some reason the loin chops don't have that fatty tail part that is the entire point (in my book) of a lamb chop.

Cheap petrol. What the price is for E10 outside, is what you are paying ULP98 at Costco. And diesel is usually 9 cents cheaper per liter.

With groceries, Costco will be cheaper than Coles/Woolies on items not on special. When Coles/Woolies put them on special, the price will be cheaper than Costco (even on bulk stuff). Good deals on booze, Penfolds Bin 389 was going for $75 the other day (few dollar cheaper than DM price) and Yarra Yering Dry Red No.1 was cheaper by $30 than out retail.

Oh, and get the prawn har gow, prawn & ginger dumplings, xiao long bao and prawn toast in the freezer section. Very good quality.

The Popcorners (red bag) are highly addictive.

Fuel and lamb box. Nuff said from me.

I realize different continent, but I echo the fuel price comments. Not sure the meat is cheaper then elsewhere, but over here the QUALITY is so much better then any supermarkets. Butchers are far and few between over hear, and their prices to me seem like they are purely for the wealthy! I find most of the Kirkland brand meat is close to their quality anyway!

Quote from Emberpak

Cheap petrol. What the price is for E10 outside, is what you are paying ULP98 at Costco. And diesel is usually 9 cents cheaper per liter.

THIS!!!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Petrol, and depending on the day, it can be 40c/litre cheaper than the others.

Bear in mind, this is in the weird socialist collective of WA where all the petrol stations (apart from Costco lol) have to report at 2:30pm each day what their prices are going to be the next day.

Utterly bizarre and has resulted in a cycle (used to be every Tuesday but I think the totally non-colluding oil companies recently shifted to 2 week cycle) where the next day you'll see a 20+c/l jump coming so every man & his dog pile into to servos to fill up, resulting in huge queues. The prices take effect at 6AM and as I'm usually on the road before then, I'd just fill up before it ticked over, but since Costco opened, I never fill up anywhere else unless I have to.

I found with Costco meat that their packed meat is within a whisker of it's used by date. If you want to cook something on the weekend, then you need to get there by Friday at the earliest to be within the Use-by date and time. I know it's only an advisory date but it's often on display only a day out, maybe 2 at the max. At least with Supermarkets you get some meat within a whole week before the Use-by date. Has anyone else found this?

Quote from Davo

I found with Costco meat that their packed meat is within a whisker of it's used by date. If you want to cook something on the weekend, then you need to get there by Friday at the earliest to be within the Use-by date and time. I know it's only an advisory date but it's often on display only a day out, maybe 2 at the max. At least with Supermarkets you get some meat within a whole week before the Use-by date. Has anyone else found this?

The 3kg mince pack usually has only (I think, if I remember right) 3 days on it. Yet I've literally watched them packing it and bring it out so it clearly hasn't been out on display from the day before. Their supply chain is less complex than Colesworth so I'm not sure why - could they have stricter standards on determining the 'use by' date?

No, they just put on short dates to move the product. It's not about stricter standards than what FSANZ dictate, it is just something to cover their butts. There is nothing unsafe about it as the product will be ok beyond the one or two days on the use by. Costco will claim that it is best to use the product before the use by because the quality cannot be guaranteed beyond that date, or if freezing to save it for beyond the use by and then thawing, it is best to cook it straight away.

They don't want you to buy that tomahawk steak and leave it sitting in the freezer for a few weeks. They want you to cook it right away, because you think it is going to expire, then go out and buy another one. Or buy the jumbo jar of mayonnaise, realise halfway through it has "expired" so you chuck it out and get another, but you don't worry because it was so cheap anyway.

Only joined so I could get meat from there. 8-9 kg brisket, which is better for me to cook. Can't get that size at Aust butcher in my suburb.

Currently doing 2 small brisket right now. But had to get up at 6:30 am to start them.

A bigger one from Costco, and I would have started it at 11pmblasr night and got a good sleep.

Doesn't seem they are looking at Albury/Wodonga anytime soon which has a joint population of at least 100,000 plus all the other townships within 100km radius or more so for Costco runs, we'll either have to go to Canberra or Melbourne which is about the same kms each way.

Thank heavens though that Albury has the largest Harris Farm Markets which in many ways I feel are better than Costco for meat as you don't have to buy in bulk, just what you want. I has Brisket and all the good cuts too especially Cape Grim.

I personally don't think Costco is as good as when it began, many of the products that I made a special trip for are not being imported anymore.

I used to love the Idaho potato mash powder that came in a huge box, it was delicious but they hadn't brought that into Australia now for 3 years, luckily when i was in Japan recently, we went to a Costco not far away from where we were and I found a box of this delicious mash so i bought a box, the wife asked "where are we going to put that in the suitcase"? "I dunno" I said...".just chuck the box and fit the sachets in somewhere" so I'm happy now, got my stash of mash

Quote from Davo

"I dunno" I said...".just chuck the box and fit the sachets in somewhere"

Given you were going to be bringing a fair quantity of white powder thru customs, I where did you smuggle the sachets....?