I will if it's actually local. I buy beef from a friend with a well-cared for cattle herd a 20 minute drive from me, and I try to buy veg from local farms as well. But I refuse to pad Galen Weston's bottom line, and until I see some actual antitrust action across most sectors I am simply not engaging.

Prioritize truly local, but Costco is my fallback because they're actually good for the Canadian economy compared to our monopolistic alternatives.

They pay Canadian trucking companies about 2x-3x above market rates at times to guarantee good service. Their entire business model is just better for everyone at basically every step.

Anything at Costco is almost always ½-¾ what we’d pay elsewhere

The few times that I gave Costco a try, their grocery items were always more expensive than regular grocery stores. It never made sense to me.

And not having to visit their store in a cyclist-hostile area to battle their parking lot saves times, which is worth more than any potential savings.

Maybe they offer better deals for non-food items? Not sure.

That said, for me, it's Canadian for most non-food items, and our local Canadian grocery stores for foodstuff.

We try to strike a balance between local producers (fruit, veg, meats) that are more expensive and shopping at Walmart for staples. I know, I know Walmart but they have the MOST Canadian and international products here! It’s ridiculous but even our local coop where we shop too has LESS Canadian or non-US stuff!! Sobeys is mediocre at best as well.

Superstore won’t see us again (they are the worst liars and overpriced no end) so Walmart it is. With a heavy dose of ultra local farm products. Some Costco shopping (4x/year?) but I can’t stomach shopping there more often because of the amount of people.

For the purposes of "how much does 5lb of onion cost me? And how much do they pay their employees in my local economy?" that's kind of irrelevant. Sounds like they found a more economically efficient way to deliver products.

Do you have a source for that 336? I believe that was the previous CEO while the current has a pay ratio of 262, which is pretty standard from what I can tell.

https://aflcio.org/paywatch/company-pay-ratios

Not that Costco is sunshine and roses but (from an American perspective) they're one of the least bad options.

I wouldn't say most of us are loyal. We'll be turning our backs on them the moment they enshittify. They just haven't yet.

Usually about half the checkouts are there for holiday rushes, like Easter.

Costco has the unique problem that more tills open get bottlenecked at the receipt check, and you can’t let the checkout lane exits get blocked or your inner lanes stop moving.

And I swear every fucking time I go the store layout is just a little bit different. Assume it's intentional to get you to wander a bit but it's annoying as hell

Costco the company is amazing (the fact that it is US based notwithstanding), but the people who shop there (at least where I am, western US) are the worst. It’s like Disneyland for boomers who vote Republican.

Even with most of the 15 checkouts and 6 self-checkouts open, the downtown (transit-accessible!) Vancouver Costco has lines nearly all the time.