redstormpopcorn posted:

Going to Costco RIGHT NOW, only wanna spend like $20 aside from their little cafe thing. What's the best thing you got?

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

Just grabbed a 14lb Choice NY Strip Roast for $85, brought it home and carved it into 16 steaks. So drat good, NY Strip for $6/lb. A few years ago they carried 100% pure Kona coffee...it was like $25 for 2lbs. I remember buying $150 worth. It was the best coffee I ever had. They haven't brought it back since.

Jalumibnkrayal posted:

Just grabbed a 14lb Choice NY Strip Roast for $85, brought it home and carved it into 16 steaks. So drat good, NY Strip for $6/lb. A few years ago they carried 100% pure Kona coffee...it was like $25 for 2lbs. I remember buying $150 worth. It was the best coffee I ever had. They haven't brought it back since.

Philthy posted:

I just had one of those huge chicken curry in a box that feeds 6 for $5.

Lies, it only feeds one.

It was okay. Probably wouldn't buy it again though.

Fog Tripper posted:

Raspberry Chipotle marinade.

Utz posted:

etalian posted:

Try the Trader's Joe brand if you need a quick meal for one.

Xaris posted:

Trader Joes is basically the Costco for singles. It owns in it's own way but man there are a lot of bombshells at Trader Joes.

Probuys are like the Orange Chicken, canned beans (all varieties), vegetarian sausage, their margherita pizza, whole grain dijon mustard, mayo, some juices, hummus, Mac n Cheese, some dips/chips/crackers/pretzels, and some prepackaged meals (but some of them are really expensive for like a tiny rear end salad). Their breads are OK but they go bad within loving 2 days and their vegetable selection sucks dick. Their "sriracha" is an unholy anal devil masquerading as a condiment, it's loving nasty.

origami posted:

I have a few and keep blowing the crotch out

babypolis posted:

so how come costco can sell affordable stuff while still paying a living wage? is it lack of parasitic management and executive class?

babypolis posted:

so how come costco can sell affordable stuff while still paying a living wage? is it lack of parasitic management and executive class?

babypolis posted:

so how come costco can sell affordable stuff while still paying a living wage? is it lack of parasitic management and executive class?

quote:

Wal-Mart’s legendary obsession with cost containment shows up in countless ways, including aggressive control of employee benefits and wages. Managing labor costs isn’t a crazy idea, of course. But stingy pay and benefits don’t necessarily translate into lower costs in the long run.

Consider Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, which compete fiercely on low-price merchandise. Among warehouse retailers, Costco—with 338 stores and 67,600 full-time employees in the United States—is number one, accounting for about 50% of the market. Sam’s Club—with 551 stores and 110,200 employees in the United States—is number two, with about 40% of the market.

Though the businesses are direct competitors and quite similar overall, a remarkable disparity shows up in their wage and benefits structures. The average wage at Costco is $17 an hour. Wal-Mart does not break out the pay of its Sam’s Club workers, but a full-time worker at Wal-Mart makes $10.11 an hour on average, and a variety of sources suggest that Sam’s Club’s pay scale is similar to Wal-Mart’s. A 2005 New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse reported that at $17 an hour, Costco’s average pay is 72% higher than Sam’s Club’s ($9.86 an hour). Interviews that a colleague and I conducted with a dozen Sam’s Club employees in San Francisco and Denver put the average hourly wage at about $10. And a 2004 BusinessWeek article by Stanley Holmes and Wendy Zellner estimated Sam’s Club’s average hourly wage at $11.52.

On the benefits side, 82% of Costco employees have health-insurance coverage, compared with less than half at Wal-Mart. And Costco workers pay just 8% of their health premiums, whereas Wal-Mart workers pay 33% of theirs. Ninety-one percent of Costco’s employees are covered by retirement plans, with the company contributing an annual average of $1,330 per employee, while 64 percent of employees at Sam’s Club are covered, with the company contributing an annual average of $747 per employee.

Costco’s practices are clearly more expensive, but they have an offsetting cost-containment effect: Turnover is unusually low, at 17% overall and just 6% after one year’s employment. In contrast, turnover at Wal-Mart is 44% a year, close to the industry average. In skilled and semi-skilled jobs, the fully loaded cost of replacing a worker who leaves (excluding lost productivity) is typically 1.5 to 2.5 times the worker’s annual salary. To be conservative, let’s assume that the total cost of replacing an hourly employee at Costco or Sam’s Club is only 60% of his or her annual salary. If a Costco employee quits, the cost of replacing him or her is therefore $21,216. If a Sam’s Club employee leaves, the cost is $12,617. At first glance, it may seem that the low-wage approach at Sam’s Club would result in lower turnover costs. But if its turnover rate is the same as Wal-Mart’s, Sam’s Club loses more than twice as many people as Costco does: 44% versus 17%. By this calculation, the total annual cost to Costco of employee churn is $244 million, whereas the total annual cost to Sam’s Club is $612 million. That’s $5,274 per Sam’s Club employee, versus $3,628 per Costco employee.

In return for its generous wages and benefits, Costco gets one of the most loyal and productive workforces in all of retailing, and, probably not coincidentally, the lowest shrinkage (employee theft) figures in the industry. While Sam’s Club and Costco generated $37 billion and $43 billion, respectively, in U.S. sales last year, Costco did it with 38% fewer employees—admittedly, in part by selling to higher-income shoppers and offering more high-end goods. As a result, Costco generated $21,805 in U.S. operating profit per hourly employee, compared with $11,615 at Sam’s Club. Costco’s stable, productive workforce more than offsets its higher costs.

These figures challenge the common assumption that labor rates equal labor costs. Costco’s approach shows that when it comes to wages and benefits, a cost-leadership strategy need not be a race to the bottom.

Blistex posted:

I have a standing order with my Aunt (has a Costco membership) that whenever she goes, she gets me a pack of those Chocolate Chip Muffins.

Accretionist posted:

Yeah, it's cultural rather than necessary or even good business. Investing in your labor force can even save you a ton of money and increase productivity.

Here's a 2006 article from Harvard Business Review:

etalian posted:

On the more cynical side better benefits also helps to discourage the formation of unions in the store too.

Haverchuck posted:

the gallon jar of jelly bellies (I'm 8 years old)

Haverchuck posted:

this is true of whole foods as well

Darth123123 posted:

Do the poors have to join to eat?

jarjarbinksfan621 posted:

i've never even seen a costco, but i've been to sam's club a bunch. not impressed. there's only like 3 things i know of that are a good deal there-- oatmeal, candy, and toilet paper. almost everything is the same price (or more) for the same product at any grocery store.

babypolis posted:

so how come costco can sell affordable stuff while still paying a living wage? is it lack of parasitic management and executive class?