Awhile back I posted that I got a Costco membership for a Father's Day gift and my initial impressions of the place. I'd like to give y'all an update.
First, I'm retired military and as such I have the privilege of shopping at the military commissary. The one I use is one of the best in the Army, Ft Gordon, GA. The prices at the commissary are significantly lower than those at super markets such as Publix, Kroger, etc with the exception of some of their sales.
After doing a complete month and cycle of shopping for a month at both the commissary and Costco I'm able to make a pretty good comparison. What I found is Costco will beat the commissary on about half the items I buy. The commissary is cheaper on vegetables and meat -though the quality at Costco is somewhat better- for example, rebeye at the commissary is about $7.20 a pound and about $7.80 at Costco and about $11 at Publix. Of course, you have to buy more at Costco because of the packaging.
Cheese, dairy products, paper products, coffee, disposable aluminum pan, pecans , AAA and AA batteries are examples of things that are cheaper at Costco.
I saw nothing of inferior quality at Costco.
My purpose of telling y'all this is I never really thought about joining Costco because I didn't think I would save the $55 membership fee over the other benefits I have from the military. I was wrong. If you have a Costco (I can't speak for Sam's) available to you I recommend you join. The service is super. The employees are all friendly and seem to enjoy being there. The company apparently has an excellent training program to impress upon the the employees how important the customers are.
Hopefully, this will help some of y'all out.
Dee