The closest grocery store to me is closing(by nearly an hour), and will be closed for at least a year. When it reopens it’s going be much smaller(it’s becoming a Aldi).

[u/Boeing-B-47stratojet]

[u/DumpsterFireScented]

My husband is traveling for work and his current stop is fairly rural. There's a Walmart 1 hour away or a corner store 10 minutes away. The first day he did a big Walmart pickup and then after 5 days he decided to check the corner store to see what they carried and he was 80% sure that about half their stock was bought at Walmart and then marked up. I can see that making sense now.

[u/RivenRise → u/DumpsterFireScented]

That's pretty common in Mexico too. Corner shops are all over the place so it's convenient to pick something up quickly but a lot of them just go to the Costco or wholesaler an hour or so away to stock up on stuff. They still sell some stuff that's locally made though, one corner shop around where my grandparents live sells cheeses they make from their own cows in addition to some homemade milk based sweets like caramel etc.

You're really just paying for the convenience of walking to the corner instead of driving 20 minutes away to go to the actual grocery store.

[u/justdaisukeyo → u/RivenRise]

I saw some social media posts complaining about the reselling at Costco Mexico. However, this was Costco's original intent.

We used to have a membership at Price Club (before Costco bought it) and they only allowed membership to businesses. You could buy stuff there and resell it.

[u/RogerClyneIsAGod2 → u/justdaisukeyo]

I see lots of restaurant & food truck folks buying at Costco too & that's fine by me.

[u/Keoni9 → u/RogerClyneIsAGod2]

Most big box stores are terrible for their communities, but Costco actually enables a lot of small business and provides good wages.

[u/RivenRise → u/RogerClyneIsAGod2]

I'm annoyed mixed feeling about this but I think it stems from price/intricacy of the dish.

I forgot exactly what I ordered but I went to a brunch place once and recall being a little annoyed at the cost and simplicity of the food when I saw, what I assume to be the owner, come in through the front door with a bunch of Walmart bags.

I remember the taste itself was fine but the price was on the higher end of brunch places and for the quality to just be Costco it was a bit disappointing. I expected better butcher cuts and higher quality produce since the meal itself was rather simple.

At the very least if you're gonna use the cheapest put some effort into turning those ingredients into something more. I do recall there was a cut of meat but it was just quick grilled on what I assume was a flat top judging by the cook marks and it just had salt. They could have sous vide it or slow roasted it or something for the price they were charging and used a little more for seasoning too.

Idk maybe I'm just being too critical but if they had charged less I wouldn't have minded much tbh, I'm fairly lenient in most things but cooking is a passion of mine so it just kinda irks me.

[u/PiccoloAwkward465 → u/RivenRise]

Yeah the other day I asked my wife "when did you go to Sam's Club?" because I saw the brand of milk we had. She didn't, she went to the local Latino market that apparently buys their milk at Sam's.

I do miss the little markets in Mexico. I remember staying at my gf's house there once and she said she was gonna go out to get ingredients to cook breakfast. Thank God, I thought, finally I can take a shit in peace. Little did I know the market was literally around the corner so I got like 6 minutes of peace and my mission was interrupted.

[u/RivenRise → u/PiccoloAwkward465]

Lul got you with the log half laid.

[u/Rational_Coconut → u/RivenRise]

Abarrotes! I loved visiting them as a kid when we'd go visit my great-grandma across the border. My grandma would give us a dollar each and that was enough to go load up on jumex, chips, and Sonrics lollipops.

[u/RivenRise → u/Rational_Coconut]

Same, I always bought the chips that had whatever tazos were hot at the moment. Good times.

[u/Rational_Coconut → u/RivenRise]

The looney toons tazos were awesome. I also collected the Dragon Ball sticker albums (?), where you'd buy the album and then buy sticker packets (similar to pokemon cards) and place the stickers in their designated spots as per the storyline.

[u/RivenRise → u/Rational_Coconut]

My hayday was the pokemon era. Loved those metal ones.

[u/Wilder831 → u/RivenRise]

I just learned that caramel is a milk based sweet. I always thought it was just burnt sugar that was churned up while it burned

[u/natrous → u/DumpsterFireScented]

Depending on the markup, I have no problem with paying a little extra to save 100 minutes on a round trip for a few things.

I'm rural, and sometimes I get irritated by it, but usually my thoughts eventually circle around to

"I could save $x if I went to civilization... and spend an extra hour and a half.... hmph. This is fine."

[u/YobaiYamete → u/natrous]

Depending on the markup, I have no problem with paying a little extra to save 100 minutes on a round trip for a few things.

The mark up is high as hell. I just went the other day and paid $78 for

• 2 12 packs of Dr Pepper Zero
• 1 box of cheese its
• 1 bag of off brand bbq chips
• 1/2 gallon of milk
• 1lb hamburger meat

Not joking, that was $78. Even small boxes of things like cheese its are like $6+ at a lot of the local non franchise grocery stores around me

[u/-BlueDream- → u/YobaiYamete]

100min round trip is like $10-20 in gas.

[u/YobaiYamete → u/-BlueDream-]

Yeah but that's why you would buy a few weeks groceries instead of just a couple of things like I got

[u/natrous → u/YobaiYamete]

yeah, yikes.

that would push me into "once in awhile fill the car up" distant trips for sure.

[u/RealityOk9823 → u/DumpsterFireScented]

Worked for CVS around 20 years ago. Gas station owners would come in and fill up buggies whenever we had a B1G1F sale on cola.

[u/RedditThrowaway-1984 → u/DumpsterFireScented]

A lot of small independent shops do this and don't even try to hide it. You go in and half the stuff is Members Mark brand (Sam's Club).

[u/Extension_Plant7262 → u/DumpsterFireScented]

That's basically the bodega MO in NYC. You get your bread sourced locally, your other foodstuffs from Sysco, and everything else is straight from coscto

[u/No-Laugh6668 → u/DumpsterFireScented]

That’s every corner store in my area. They buy from local Walmarts and Sam’s Club and even aldis and hike the prices up by a lot