Costco in the USA

I keep reading that Costco is the cheapest place to fill your prescriptions and buy booze so this weekend James and I decided to hire a Zipcar this weekend and check it out. Incidentally James is definitely getting better at driving on the right side of the road. The only thing that gets us (aside from occasionally missing our freeway exits) is that when we get on the freeway we have to instantly change about 5 lanes because they all suddenly turn into exit-only lanes and it freaks us out.

But anyway, here is Costco!

We arrived somewhere around 9:45am and there was a lot of space in the parking lot. When we left at around 11:15am it was a lot more crowded, so I think getting there early was a good idea.

There’s a lot of crossover between the Australian and US Costcos. It all looked pretty familiar – they had the same 12 pack of croissants ($6 here – I think I remember them being more expensive back home) and enormous take and bake pepperoni pizzas ($8.99 plus they have a $3 off coupon at the moment). So yeah, similar but cheaper. And with a lot more stuff that we don’t have back in Australia.

Like coffins! I’m kind of covering the most ornate one but it was pink and had all kinds of fancy swirls. You can see me trying to look sad but actually looking like a weird sea creature.

image from discovery.com

The technology section was a lot larger. Unfortunately they did not have my coveted Vitamix – apparently they’re doing a demo in early November so I’ll check it out then.

Oh! I just remembered one of the biggest differences between Costco in Australia and the US – they don’t take Visa and Mastercard here. How weird is that? You can pay with cash, debit card or cheque but the only credit card they take is Amex.

Also when I walked by this packaging for Asian sauce I stopped and was like “OMG no way!”

I think the prices in the food court are actually the same as the prices in Australia – about $2 for a slice of pizza or $10 for the whole, and $1.50 a hotdog. The eating area in the Docklands is much larger, maybe because comparatively it’s a much better deal.

(Edit: I just looked up my blog post about the Docklands Costco and the pizza prices were actually $3 or $4 for a slice and $15 for the whole)

We spent $282.70 and this was our haul: (plus some salami that I forgot to include in the photo)

It would have been a lot cheaper except except for the booze. The Seattle liquor laws are weird – I think if you buy hard liquor they charge sales tax, a litre tax and also a 20.5% liquor tax. We were hoping to find some Glenfiddich but their scotch selection was pretty limited so we just got Glenlivet (which came to something like $39) and Macallan (about $50). The Veuve Cliquot was maybe $5-10 cheaper than you can get it at Dan Murphy back home.

A lot of stuff is a little bit more expensive than Safeway but you get so much more of it. Like the tortillas, vinegar, sponges, yeast, olives, crackers and spices. Other stuff like the salami, beer, coke, cetaphil and pop tarts are about the prices you can get them on sale.

But anyway after all that it turned out that I left my prescriptions at home! So I have to go back sometime next week to get them filled but that’s OK I can pick up some Mach 3 Turbo razor blades for James. We didn’t get them today because we weren’t 100% sure whether they would fit his Mach 3 handle, but a quick google tells me that they do.

So anyway that was our little adventure at Costco. I don’t know how viable a strategy it will be to take the bus there because everything there is so huge and it seems dumb just to go and buy a pack of pop tarts. We might rent a Zipcar every 3-4 months and do a big stock up. Of course this means that I now have 5 concurrent shopping lists – Whole Foods, Trader Joe, Safeway, Uwajimaya and Costco.