See the thread on the cult page itself: Costco Canada.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CostcoCanada/comments/1nb7aj1/are_you_still_buying_canadian_at_costco/
People are dropping their Costco memberships, and slowly weaning their shopping habits away from the American Bank owned: Costco. This is still the minority viewpoint as seen in the comments. But our education campaigns are slowly shifting the tides!
Remember, Costco is an American cult.
The same herd mentality that brought sheep into Costco's doors will bring them out, and onto a Canadian run option.
Costco has no direct Canadian wholesale competitor, yet.
But I have a sense that's going to change very soon. Costco is absolutely ripe for Canadian disruption. Go Leafs!
I'm currently rabidly anti-American (haven't intentionally bought an American product since the trade war began, accidentally bought some plums that were mislabeled a couple of months ago :( ) but Costco gets a pass from me. They pay their Canadian employees far better than a Canadian store does, they haven't backed off their diversity policies, and their prices on basically everything is much better than Canadian monopolies. I don't buy American products there at all but I will continue to shop there until something changes probably. They're the last American company I really do business with.
I could have written your comment, lol.
With inflation hitting food prices especially hard, getting the best value per dollar at Costco makes a huge difference. Anything at Costco is almost always ½-¾ what we'd pay elsewhere, and their return policy is incredible, so there's much lower risk when buying durable goods, too.
I'm all for minimizing buying American, but I'm not going to pay double to shop local.
I will if it's actually local. I buy beef from a friend with a well-cared for cattle herd a 20 minute drive from me, and I try to buy veg from local farms as well. But I refuse to pad Galen Weston's bottom line, and until I see some actual antitrust action across most sectors I am simply not engaging.
Prioritize truly local, but Costco is my fallback because they're actually good for the Canadian economy compared to our monopolistic alternatives.
They pay Canadian trucking companies about 2x-3x above market rates at times to guarantee good service. Their entire business model is just better for everyone at basically every step.
The few times that I gave Costco a try, their grocery items were always more expensive than regular grocery stores. It never made sense to me.
And not having to visit their store in a cyclist-hostile area to battle their parking lot saves times, which is worth more than any potential savings.
Maybe they offer better deals for non-food items? Not sure.
That said, for me, it's Canadian for most non-food items, and our local Canadian grocery stores for foodstuff.
I should probably have been more precise; their produce prices are generally roughly equal, plus or minus a bit, but the produce quality is almost always great, and it's easy to return if/when you get a rare dud.
Any other food item is almost always cheaper: dairy and other refrigerated foods, meat (great quality), non-perishable food, etc.
If you're happy to buy in bulk quantities, I haven't found any good alternatives to Costco.
Ah, it's probably because I don't eat animal products, so this additional context is helpful.
We try to strike a balance between local producers (fruit, veg, meats) that are more expensive and shopping at Walmart for staples. I know, I know Walmart but they have the MOST Canadian and international products here! It’s ridiculous but even our local coop where we shop too has LESS Canadian or non-US stuff!! Sobeys is mediocre at best as well.
Superstore won’t see us again (they are the worst liars and overpriced no end) so Walmart it is. With a heavy dose of ultra local farm products. Some Costco shopping (4x/year?) but I can’t stomach shopping there more often because of the amount of people.
Costco makes very thin margins on their sales, they make their only real profits from memberships. Not like Walmart is an alternative, they sell nothing but over processed food.
For the purposes of "how much does 5lb of onion cost me? And how much do they pay their employees in my local economy?" that's kind of irrelevant. Sounds like they found a more economically efficient way to deliver products.