Many of us Costco members love shopping at the wholesale retailer for the ability to buy household products in bulk. While stocking up on needed pantry items is great for families (and to save money and trips to the store), there are still some items often found at Costco that experts suggest purchasing less of— and maybe somewhere else.
Charlene Haugsven, founder of MyFrugalAdventures.com, sat down with CNBC and compiled a list of eight items (along with other shopping experts) that Costco customers might want to *not* buy in bulk. As she told the publication, “Just because Costco has it doesn’t mean it’s a bargain.”
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Items Experts Suggest *Not* Buying In Bulk At Costco
CNBC lists the following expert-approved list of items to avoid purchasing in bulk at Costco, including, "breakfast cereal, ground coffee, condiments and sauces (such as soy sauce), flour, milk, eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, and spices."
These items, as CNBC's Megan Leonhardt writes, were put in the "don’t buy" category due to their size at Costco. If you simply compare the Kirkland offerings of your favorite grocery products, the prices at Costco will usually win, she notes, but "the containers or packages are simply too big to end up being a good value for the average person."
Perishable items like those in the list— when bought in bulk— aren't always used in full, and may be thrown away sooner than customers might think. Ultimately, as the experts point out, this could be the opposite of bang for your buck.
"A normal family is just never going to get through the quantity you have to purchase," Haugsven says. That’s especially true, she notes, when it comes to items like soy sauce, spice mixes and produce. If you live by yourself, grabbing Costco’s 1-pound container of fresh spinach (that could last only 5 to 7 days in the refrigerator), as Leonhardt points out, may not make sense to buy, although it is still a good deal at $4.99.
Large quantities of grocery items, Leonhardt also says, can be tedious to store properly. While your typical grocery store might sell flour in 5-pound sacks, Costco sells it in 25-pound packages. "I would never want to store 25 pounds of flour. That’s a whole year’s worth of flour in advance," Haugsven says.
For other items, such as cereal, milk and eggs, "you can find normal quantities of these items at similar prices at your local grocery or big box store during a sale," Leonhardt writes. Haugsven reports that she buys the typical dozen eggs at Walmart for 32 cents an egg. Her local Costco sells eggs for 31 cents each, but "you have to buy them in quantities of two dozen at a time."
Name brand cereal also might be better to buy at your local grocery store. "Your grocery store is going to have big sales around cereal. One week it’s going to be General Mills, another week it will be Kellogg," Joanie Demer, co-founder of The Krazy Coupon Lady, tells CNBC Make It. Overall as Haugsven concludes, "I think everyone is getting super competitive with Costco and I don’t think, in order to save money on your groceries, you necessarily have to shop there."
