It is “cheaper” if you demand high end/luxury or convenience food. If you meal plan/prep and cook most of your food from scratch, Costco is much less valuable. We used to have a Costco membership but have found that we do better in terms of cost with a combo of TJ’s (eggs), local Indian grocery (legumes), and shopping loss leaders or “reduced for quick sale” items for produce and meat. This does require some more flexibility and creativity about what you cook, but we find we eat very well. We also buy less random stuff that we don’t really need and that isn’t all that healthy for us (cheese...)
As others have mentioned, I would also re-examine just how protein-rich and meaty you need your diet to be. In my experience, it’s possible to get plenty of protein from vegan or vegetarian sources, you just don’t have as much room for low-quality carbs or fat because vegan/veg protein sources typically also contain a fair amount of carbs or fat. You definitely aren’t doomed to weakness.
- Depends on where you live and what other stores are around - it may be cheaper without the "high/end luxury"
- Lots of food at costco is not high end or luxury
- It also matters if you care philosophically about workers, etc. Living wage and all that.
In response:
-Certainly, but from this thread, quite a bit of what people are reporting buying there is higher end food. Things like fancy cheese, coffee, quinoa, salmon, turkey sausage, frozen cauliflower rice, greek yogurt, chicken tenderloins, pita chips, salad mixes, chocolate, rogaine, pool chemicals, energy drinks and protein powders...none of these are things you NEED to have to live a healthy life, and I would class them all as "luxury" items. It's true that basics like oatmeal, dried beans, flour, TP, etc. are often also available at Costco for a good price, but for a single person I would question whether the savings on those items alone is really enough to justify the annual membership. In my area, I have found a lot of those basic items are periodically cheaper at places like Sprouts, Smart & Final, the local Indian grocery, or even Whole Foods at times, if you are willing to keep an eye out for sales. I find also the selection of these kinds of basics is better elsewhere. Costco only has 1-2 kinds of dried legumes, for example, limited spice selection, etc. The produce is also on the higher end...when did you last see a cabbage at Costco? I never have. But I concede that every location is different and there are probably some places where Costco makes a lot of sense. OP needs to do their own research and my view is that Costco is not uniformly cheaper and that if you are not insistent on particular high-end versions of items, you may not find Costco to be that amazing. Some people have also pointed to the gas savings as being worth the membership, to which I say maybe you need to be re-examining how much you are driving. We fill up our 10 gallon tank less than once a month.
-Towards the end of our Costco days I was finding they were moving more and more towards pricier versions of even basic items. For example, when we started shopping there, they stocked the 105 oz. cans of tomatoes and the price was great. At some point they stopped selling those and instead started selling a flat of 16oz cans of organic tomatoes. At that point it was cheaper to buy 32 oz cans from the grocery store. I noticed this more and more as they started to emphasize their organic offerings--sure they were doing more organic fruit and veg, but also a LOT more organic snacks, frozen foods, and stuff like coconut water. I'm sure the basics are still there but they are getting crowded out by fancier items in our areas.
-Definitely see your point about living wage, but my city (where all the stores we frequent are located, unlike Costco, which is a couple towns over) has a fairly high minimum wage and has further increases scheduled. So I'm not convinced I would be supporting something better by driving 10 miles to Costco. But certainly, YMMV on this one.