Frugal Tip: Costco Giftcards can be used in lieu of membership!
If you have a friend with a costco membership, you can ask them to buy you some $25 Costco Shopcards, which you can use at the entrance to get into the store and at checkout to verify you can make a purchase. Anything you have over $25, they'll allow you to use an alternative method of payment to pay for it.
They make you turn in the card at checkout, so it's certainly not worth it if you go more than a handful of times a year, but for those who go less, it's a good way of avoiding the membership fee.
Dude they have a cafeteria where they sell 1/4lbs hotdogs with a drink for $1.50 nationwide. The membership could honestly be worth for the cafeteria alone
I know you’re coming from the company-bad perspective, but Costco is essentially an employee-owned coop, perhaps the last of its kind in retail, which is why its customers are loyal af and will absolutely fight you on this.
I don’t shop there and even I am compelled to say something.
the tradeoff is that they make less per item sold in store than other grocers, and often they take clear losses on some things (e.g 5$ rotisserie chicken, 1.50 hotdog soda)
Please never go to costco. There’s already too many people and I like my space. You can spend your extra dollars at Safeway or wherever else you’d like.