About time! Costco here we go! Hilo Costco!

[Gus]

Now it's easy to see how people fall for fake news because they want to believe.

[EightFingers]

Should have said Sam's Club. Would have been more believable. Huh.........

[Kenney]

Good point Gus.

[Obie]

The great thing about Facebook is that I have been able to block all of Damon's posts.

[caveat emptor]

A friend just told me today that when he was at the Costco on Sat., the customer desk told him that Costco was coming to the east side 2019.

[Midnight Rambler]

I honestly don't get why everyone is so amped about Costco. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like it - I live on Oahu at the moment so I got there for practically all my food aside from produce - but Cost-U-Less has 90% of what I need from there, plus they have large size containers of Kohala kim chee which Costco doesn't. Only thing missing is the cheap gas, but TBH the savings from that only barely makes up for the membership fee. It's nuts that there are people who burn $30 worth of gas to save $32 on a shopping trip.

[leilanidude]

My car gets 30mpg. It is 90 miles one way/180 round trip. 180 miles = 6 gallons of gas = $18. I come back with $300+ of food, most of which is going into the freezer. I go back every 2-3 months.

[BillyB]

They have been known to have fresh peaches. Haley's Comet comes more often than fresh peaches come to Hilo.

You can qualify as "Free: range fed" just grazing on the samples at Costco, and everyone knows how much healthier free range fed is. So it is a mater of public health.

[MarkP]

Diesel is $3/gal at Costco when it is $4/gal everywhere else. That's really significant.

[terracore]

" It's nuts that there are people who burn $30 worth of gas to save $32 on a shopping trip"

It depends on what you need. The stainless steel shelving units were $80 each cheaper at Costco than Cost-U-Less. Pays for 1 year membership and 1 trip's worth of gas. The same could be said for a single bottle of scotch. Or one car battery. Or two tires. A lot of people with the executive memberships don't pay for their memberships because their cash-back amount is higher than membership fees. There are other gimmicks too, like sharing costco memberships. Your membership comes with cards for two people. So long as they both can get mail at the same household they do not have to be related.

A lot of the produce for sale at the east side "farmer's markets" come from Costco. Half the inventory of Cost-U-Less comes from Costco, and marked up appropriately for the resale.

Gas at KOA Costco a week ago was $2.49/gallon. Imagine what it would be in Hilo if they didn't have to truck it half way across the island... $1.99? That would pay the yearly membership fee in 4-5 fill-ups.