* Eat at the food court
* Buy alcohol (in certain states, see below)
* Get an eye exam
* Get your hearing checked
* Fill prescriptions at the pharmacy
* Arizona
* California
* Connecticut
* Delaware
* Hawaii
* Indiana
* Massachusetts
* Michigan
* Minnesota
* New York
* Texas
* Vermont
[0]https://www.costco.com/Costco-Cash-Card.product.10024438.htm... [1]https://www.google.com/maps/place/Costco+Wholesale/@37.25296...
I've heard this touted as a "hack" but this makes absolute economic sense for Costco -- they get an advance on your purchase and get you into the store to potentially see the value in signing up.
I just didn't imagine they'd let me say "Um, yeah, put $1 on my Costco Cash card, and the other $399 on my Visa".
Thus, while it is possible, their devout employees don't like it and go out of their way to make one feel like a leper for not being a member.
The food court I'm not as sure about, but in both cases I've walked into a Costco with no membership and they were fine with it.
And, at the ones where the food vending is on the inside, it's on the "paid" side of the cash registers. You can get to this area just by claiming you're "going to member services", since that's also on that side, and it's where you go when you forget your card (and so can't show membership at the checkpoint).
Source: Have forgotten my card a lot.
I've never seen a Costco with the food vending in a window on the outside of the building. I've always seen it against the wall after the checkout. Which is also after the checkpoint.
I think a window on the outside of the building only works in moderate climates. I don't see it working in Phoenix or Minneapolis.
I don't. Nor does anyone else I know.
It's just consumption moved around in time.
I know, I know, it may be aesthetically distasteful to you to see people walking out with 36 rolls of toilet paper instead of six. It may be hard not to sneer at the poor people trapped on the capitalist treadmill.
But you should get over it, because in most ways you're better off when people shop at CostCo, because buying that way and storing things at home for a time is much more packaging and environmentally efficient that packing things into little bundles to be bought every day. And buying like that also minimizes the little bites being taken out by middlemen who are doing the packaging into little bundles. And a car trip taken to CostCo that fills the car is more efficient than lots of little trips to the grocery store.
I suspect this is the real source of the hostility, rather than aesthetics: Costco represents, in general, a larger-land-footprint, car-dependent, suburban (or even semi-rural) lifestyle.
There's likely something of a false dichotomy at work here, as well, in that there could be Costco-compatible dense-city living, but that doesn't seem to be true currently.
I'm confident some people also object to the car use itself, but that's way too general a topic.
Costco electronics prices are competitive and have the best return policy and practice in the industry.
Non-perishable goods are canned or sealed items that can be kept for years in cool, dark, dry places.
Unopened milk does not last nearly as long. Still, it can last for ~3 weeks at home depending on how it's preserved, how old is was when you got it, and if you keep your fridge cold enough. Which again should be plenty if you actually use milk.
Really the trick to bulk buying (besides liberal use of your freezer) is only bulk-buying things you actually use a lot of. I'll buy tomatoes at Costco because I'll eat them but I don't eat nearly enough apples for buying a massive thing of apples to make sense.
(To be fair, I think I'm the only person I know who does this)
It seems the only places where it's "common" are Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, France, and Belgium.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_process...
In some cities I've lived, the expiration date of milk was often two or three weeks out. In other cities, it was 10 days maximum.
I think it's because dairies (and cows) are not equally plentiful in every part of the country.
One thing I have noticed is that in the places where regular milk expires in 10 days, the organic milk (which one family member drinks) doesn't expire for a month or more.
only limitation is: infant formula and false advertising (defined in https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/9/317.8 )
Not every milk is UHT but every grocery store offers it.