Costco Fail

I am so depressed. When I heard 2 years ago that Costco was building in our city, I rejoiced, knowing that finally I could get all this fantastic produce that dozens of you on-line people show in your shopping haul videos. Well, it opened the second week of March, and I was finally able to get there this past Wednesday.

They should have stayed away.

As soon as we walked in the lobby, the smell of fish and chicken hit us, even with the front doors open and blowers on. Not a good sign. We were able to do a walk-though without signing up, but was told after March one would need to be a member just to enter the store.

So, in we go. The first things we see are aisles and aisles of junk food - chips, cookies, granola, candy, many of them with the organic label. Big whoop. Apple computers, priced higher than Best Buy sells them for. Hmmm. My spidy senses were tingling, and not in a good way.

Passed by health and beauty aids, soda, bottled water, paper products, and finally to the basic groceries, where again, it was mostly packaged junk food. We saw some Quaker old-fashioned oats we might be interested in, but the only other oatmeal was boxes of flavored instant, store brand. Plenty of sugary crap cereal, though. Rice? A few varieties of white, all in 25 pound bags, one display of 3 pound bags of brown but more expensive than I had seen elsewhere, A few types of name brand canned beans but no low-sodium. Only 1 offering of dried beans, a 3-pound bag of pintos, again more expensive than a local chain grocery store sells them for.

Moving out of the packaged foods, into frozen. 6 aisles of processed junk foods disguised as meals and snacks, any kind of meat and fish imaginable, including sides of beef and pigs hanging on hooks. Ugh! Some 5 pound bags of broccoli or green beans (the only frozen veggies) and another few shelves with frozen fruits. The ice creams took up 6 display cases.

Maybe produce will have things I can eat. But where's the produce department? The entire back of the store is fish, packaged fresh meats, and deli items. Wait! Is that a box of tomatoes I see? Yes, plastic boxes of cherry tomatoes, but very poor quality and not so good a price. Some pint boxes of blackberries are next, then in a corner by the bread is a display of russets and sweet potatoes and around the other side of the table, oranges. Nothing is organic. Where are all the greens people on-line brag about? We continue walking all over the fresh food section but not one green leaf could be found, either fresh or packaged. We asked 3 different workers, and none of them were able to show us where leafy greens could be found, only frozen. One worker walked with us over 15 minutes, and *she* couldn't find any either! (sigh)

We sadly trodded through the rest of the store. Appliances - the only Instant Pot was the Nova, only $2 cheaper than Amazon. The one air fryer was an off brand that Amazon only has through vendors, again at a price higher than that store. One electric toothbrush, one hair dryer, a few toaster ovens, a chest freezer and dorm sized refrigerators (both no-name brands). We didn't even bother picking through the clothing - t-shirts, straw hats, and some children's pajamas. I saw one table with books on it but it was in such a disarray it wasn't worth trying to browse through.

As we were leaving, the guy who let us in asked how we liked it. We shook our heads and said sorry, we won't be joining. He promised us the turnover in items is fast, that next week there will be a whole different selection to choose from. Since we couldn't find even 5 items we wanted in this walk-though, I doubt they would have much more next week, and there's a good chance they would have even less.

Oh, well.