Oh Yeah - I forgot. Sam's public price on gasoline is always competitive. When you subtract the .05/gallon member's discount, it more than pays for the membership (even if you aren't driving my 8.1 Liter Chevy pickup).
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Holly cow! (literally) Out here on Long Island we're paying about $4.50/gal at the grocery store, and that in a state with a massive dairy industry.
Chad
Can't speak for Sam's Club, but Costco is definitely worth it. Just for the $29.99 bottles of Herradura gold. Two bottles and you've saved your yearly membership fee. Likewise the Veuve Cliquot (a $10-$15/bottle savings), or the BV Rutherford Cab for $15 (vs. $20 in the stores, if you can find it).
The 2.5# packs of blueberries (in season) for $5.00 aren't a bad deal, either.
scott
For what it's worth, very little of that $4.50 makes it to the farmer, something like $12.00/cwt. Figure about 8 pounds to the gallon, that is about a dollar a gallon to the farmer; the rest is processing costs (pasteurization) and markup.
Out here, it runs about $3.85 at the grocers; at my grocer, the second gallon is only $1.00. So that's about 2.50 a gallon; not bad for the Bay Area.
scott
Used to do Sams when I lived in Idaho, now (and before that) it is Costco. Bulk food warehouses aren't what they were before the yuppie crowd discovered them (they don't have flour in 100lb sacks any more) but if you are price savvy you can do OK. Store brands are smart, name brands are generally less than in a grocery store but still far more expensive than store brands. If the choice is between name brand in bulk at Costco and store brand in small containers at Safeway I usually do the Safeway thing.
Tim Douglass
Costco's "executive" membership is pricy ($100) but if you do virtually all your shopping there like I do (only real shopping in 100 mile radius) the 2% rebate covers the cost of the membership over a year. Fate has it that I plunk down $300 on every visit no matter if I shop with a long list or pop in because I happen to be in the neighborhood....
-Bruce
I may be waaaay off base, but I also think some of the pricing difference has to do with the economic base of the community - meaning, "what the market will bear" with an additional thought to making a basic staple of childhood nutrition available to segments that may not buy it if it were more expensive.
Here in semi-rural Oregon we have a relatively large migrant community that works the surrounding agriculture. I'm suspecting the commonly available coupon for a gallon at under $2 is aimed at this segment. I don't know for sure of course...
Here's a non-culinary "Yeah, BUDDY!" from Sam's:
Takes the mystery of why it's hard to make a living making furniture .... I literally can't buy the wood locally for that price!
That's probably true. But the $4.50/gal is not so far off for NY City as well. I'm out in suburbia Long Island, so you could argue that my area is more affluent than a lot of NY City and can bear the $4.50/gal. But there are lots of low income families with children in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, etc, and the high milk prices are a burden on them.
I tend to think that right now a lot of the price is because of the dairy farms. The price here and in the city has gone up by more than $1/gal over the past year, and that's pretty hard to attribute to the distributor.
Chad
I have visited Sam's Club. My employer gave free membership cards but I only shop there once or twice a year as it is over 30 miles away. It would be great for catering and someone who throws frequent parties, but not too useful for small families or those who have limited storage space. I have not seen anything woodworker-related in Sam's Club.
For us, it's the same as what others have said. You have to be careful what you buy. For example, there's a goofy type of mozzarella cheese I like to get. All the local grocery stores have it for $8, sam's has it for $4. Luckily, my wife is real good about knowing what a good price is. I would never keep track of it all. They also have things I can't get anywhere else. For years, we've been buying these bags of chicken. My daughter started calling it "circle chicken" at about 3 years old. She's 12 now. It's a bag of about 40 skinless, boneless chicken thighs. They have other parts also. I think it's $9 for the bag. They have spiral cut hams that are usually too expensive, but sometimes go on sale of a spectacular price. They have pans of frozen lazagne that are really good also. Then there's the pre-made frozen meatballs. There's a lot of things.
brian
We pay about $2.25 per gallon in Texas. How long will a gallon set in the refrigerator before it spoils? We get about 10 days on average.
scott
In most areas of the country (and most definitely in the People's Republic of Pennsylvania) there are government mandated MINIMUM prices that milk can be sold for. Very seldomly is it sold for more than the minimum and NEVER for less. You will get fined heavily if caught selling for less than the minimum. The Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board strictly enforces this law. A couple of years ago the School District I work for went to bid for its dairy and juice products. All vendors bid the state minimum prices for the dairy (and we use a LOT of milk) but there was some seriously competitive pricing on the juice. After we awarded the contract to the lowest bidder one of their competitors filed a complaint with the Milk Marketing Board alleging that the winner was effectively selling milk below the minimum by selling juice products below their cost. The Milk Marketing Board proceeded to investigate and 4 or 5 months later ruled that the company had "underpriced" the milk by selling juice below cost. They forced the company to increase their prices to us, forced us to pay the increased price for all products already purchased and consumed to date as well as all future purchases and fined the company heavily. This was for charging a public school district too LITTLE!!!! I could not believe it when I had to write that check. That is government in this so-called "capitalist" country ;)
Dave Hall
snipped-for-privacy@kreusch.com (Jay) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:
I don't think we EVER get out of Costco for less than $300....
Patriarch
I presume you're talking milk? If so, freeze it. Don't know what the plastic jugs do but the paper ones take it just fine. Shake it up before you open it--freezing tends to separate it.
Phisherman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
really
whithout
of
swarming
off -
Depends on what "related" means I guess. Tonight I was at Sam's for milk, greens, freezer bags, and some other odds-n-ends and took at look at the tools. They have Porter-Cable circular saws (6" I think)on sale for $75. I didn't see the model number, but there's nothing else on the net for that price. They had the small P-C rotary cutter (aka "rotozip") on clearance for $25, and a big framing nailer for under $200. (I didn't look closely at any of these as I don't need them.)
They typically have PC nailers, drills, and circular saws. Occasionally they have Delta or PC miter saws in the $300 range. A few sizes of compressors, inc. some 60 gal 220v models. Great prices on ladders (1/2 of what Menard's charges for the exact model when I bought my 28' there). Other shop equipment of various sorts, all generally about 30% less than any place else I've ever seen it.
It's hard to beat the prices on some things there, for sure. And contrary to another poster's experience, we can still get 50 and
100# bags of flour at our Sams.-Derek
I've switched brands of milk in the past because the newer brand didn't go sour as fast. The company explanation was that it was packaged differently allowing less light to be absorbed by the milk.
Hi Jay, You've hit a few nerves with me. Good ones, don't worry. I have also seen those big furniture items at Costco and a few at Sam's, I have always looked at these things suspiciously. I have been burnt by buying a piece only to take it home and find that it was actually constructed of MDF with "a-picture-of-wood-on-sticky- shelf-paper-type-stuff" plastered all over it. But I guess I have seen some higher priced stuff that was real wood. My Dad used to say to let your eyes be your market, this is true in the warehouse stores for sure. Also good idea about the roses, hadn't even thought of that angle. Here a couple of years ago around Christmas time I reckon, I saw some Jet 10" Contractor grade Table saws in Costco. Just about the time I got the money up to buy one, they ran out. My luck! They were I think 50 or more dollars less than anywhere else I could find, if memory serves. They came with the jetfence I think. Not the Biesmeyer clone. Later, Beej
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