Costco Field Trip

About 2 years ago, Costco caused a major fracas in our suburban community when they announced their intention to locate a store here. There was some effort to dress up the controversy as an environmental issue related to the number of gas pumps that were part of the store. However, it was a nimby issue plain and simple. Opponents stated that a big-box store would damage the character of our town, even though it would be located at the western edge of town next to the tollway midst other corporate campuses. There was some talk of damage to the local merchants, but this was mostly for show. It was already clear that residents were not averse to shopping at Costco. Every Friday, Nick routinely spots the telltale Kirkland store brand logo in the curbside recycling bins awaiting the weekly pick-up. Costco took Lake Forest’s rejection in stride and simply relocated across the street. The neighboring town of Mattawan dispassionately balanced the several million dollars in tax revenue from Costco against the possible besmirching of their town character, and logically decided in favor of Costco. Bottom line is that there is now a Costco 5 minutes from our house.

Nick has been going to Costco for years with great enthusiasm, based on both the vast selection of wine and beer and the element of surprise. The local grocery store is dreary and unimaginative, but Nick often stumbles across something totally unexpected at Costco. The best example is many years ago when he went to Sam’s Club, the Costco precursor, ostensibly to stock up on paper towels and toilet paper. He returned with a trampoline that became the focal point of our back yard for many years. Now he is more likely to come back with food surprises, whose bulk is challenging for us empty nesters. Our freezer is filled with pork chops, lamb chops, chicken breasts, all repackaged here at home into quantities of two. Fresh food is a little harder to manage. Two weeks ago, he came back with 5 pounds of limes – I don’t think that I’ve consumed more than 1 pound in my entire life. To help with the limes, he also bought a jumbo vat of pre-mixed margaritas, tequila and all. Even though I am a virtual teetotaler, I wanted to be a gamer, so I gallantly starting swilling a nightly margarita or two, but steadfastly drew the line when I started eying the margaritas as an alternative to a noon time iced lemonade. Limes went on fish, guacamole, anything else we could think of, and we gave them away as door prizes, but despite these heroic efforts, a couple wizened old limes linger on in the fridge.

Nick also discovered Costco was an ideal field trip for my father in his waning years. Dad would stand dumbfounded in the warehouse and shake his head and say, “Who buys all this stuff?” and then be even more amazed as Nick used rebates and coupons to buy him a CD player for virtually nothing. It was also a great place for exercise in the winter. There was no way that my father would ever stroll around a mall, but he was happy to wander through Costco, mostly looking at the electronics and marveling at the sheer volume of the merchandise. My father was also too proud to use a walker or even a cane, but using a grocery cart for support as he toured Costco was the perfect solution.

I had been to Costco briefly a few times before, but after the lime episode, I thought it was time to take a more focused field trip. As we drove up, I said, “What don’t they sell here. They don’t sell cars do they?” Turns out that you can buy a car, and a few were on display in the parking lot as we entered. Costco has established some a relationship with a local car dealer, and if you present your Costco card to the dealer, you get some sort of “pre-arranged pricing.” I envisioned the corporate staff of Costco brainstorming what other discount opportunities might appeal to a captive audience willing to be surprised and they came up with coffins. They don’t stock them at the store, buy you can buy them with a discount on-line. The website goes into great detail about the reliability of expedited shipping, barring “Acts of God,” ironic, since this would be the reason you would need a coffin in the first place. You would think that coffins would be just the type of product that other discount clubs, such as AARP, should offer their members, but only Costco is fearless enough to offer funerary supplies. Every time Nick goes into Costco he comments on their expanding services, such as gutters and health insurance.

Before we went, Nick recommended that I take my seldom-used cell phone in case we got separated, but as I entered I realized that the better accessory would have been my binoculars cialisviagras.com. While I use binoculars mostly for bird watching, when our kids were younger I found them to be essential when trying to identify the correct soccer field in a vast complex swarming with identically uniformed children. I felt the same way in Costco, and I needed binoculars to read the remote aisle markers and the upper tiers of the shelves. Costco on a Saturday is a community event. Far from the impersonal big box, Nick always runs into people he knows. One time he met an acquaintance, who eventually became a client due to this chance meeting. Costco on Saturdays is also a popular family adventure. With a little effort, an entire family of kids can stitch together a free lunch by eating their way through all the store samples. There was some pretty tasty chicken, bratwurst, chips with dip, mango juice, brownies fresh from the microwave and popcorn.

I ran into a family that had succumbed to the lucky strike extra – an enormous stuffed plush dog that barely fit into the over-sized grocery cart. I foolishly asked the mother, “Did you come to Costco intending to buy that?”

“Are you kidding,” she said. “We saw other families coming out the store with one, and the kids just had to have one. Besides, I couldn’t believe how cheap it was.”

And that of course is the marketing genius of Costco – the stuffed animal was located right as you entered the store, and I am sure that this coveted impulse display spot rotates depending on the day of the week and the expected clientele. I returned to Costco later in the week – the only item on the agenda was to take some pictures for this story. The stuffed animals were gone and replaced with a rack of bicycles. I have been using my husband’s very lovely bicycle, but it is a man’s bike. I don’t understand why bicycles have sexual identities, but the bottom line is that I just don’t like having to swing my leg over the back wheel to get on and off the bike. I suspect men feel the same way but don’t want to be emasculated by riding the more practical chick bike. But the whole rack of women’s bikes was the perfect impulse purchase. I was only able to resist temptation when I realized that the bike would not fit into my car.

I tried again to think of what Costco didn’t sell. I asked Nick, “Can you buy puppies at Costco?” To me this is the quintessential impulse purchase that would be ideal for Costco. Twice I have been the victim of the impulse puppy when Nick took the kids to the pet store “just for fun.” Predictably I got the call twenty minutes later, with everyone on the phone gushing about some puppy that was impossibly cute, and of course there was always another family ogling him, and oh, please, oh please, oh please …. We now have two dogs, a testament to the success of the impulse puppy as I am most definitely not a dog person. Costco seems somewhat sensitive to their status as the soul-less big box store and makes an effort to stock some local items, such as local beer, and then there is the example of their relationship with the local car dealer. If they wanted to take this concept one step further, they could give up some of their immense space to a rotating collection of local nonprofits, like maybe a blood drive, or the volunteer Fair Trade Market store, and of course the local non-profit pet store, which is staffed by disabled adults. Given the success of the oversized stuffed dogs, I bet Nick that Costco would be selling puppies within the year.

Last weekend, Nick went off to Costco to buy a dehumidifier for the basement, and I was prepared to be surprised – and there it was on the counter, two pounds of baby bok choy, a vegetable that has never been a routine part of our cuisine because our boring grocery store doesn’t carry it. But unlike limes, bok choy seriously shrinks as it cooks. An overflowing frying pan reduces to a mere handful of yummy bok choy sautéed with garlic and ginger. We are on day three, and I have no doubt we will be able to polish this off.