I've become a Costco person in recent years. At least in my perception, inflation has affected grocery stores unevenly:

Whole Foods: eye-bogglingly expensive (and no, I don't think it always was)

Wegmans: substantially more expensive than a few years ago, and a noticeable decline in produce quality

Trader Joes: incredible value on many prepared foods, but not the best source for staples like rice or paper products.

Costco is not inflation-proof by any means but they have pretty much 0 margins and they're reliably the best value on just about whatever they sell. The selection can be limited in some ways compared to a supermarket, and they can be a bad place to be health conscious (as it can be hard to resist massive containers of ultra cheap and delicious treats of various kinds) or to try to try to be an ethical consumer (and please spare me the HN cynical line on this, I get it, I have no real agency and I'm pathetically guilt-ridden): I've read bad things about their meat sourcing, they rarely have coffee with bona fides like fair trade or shade grown, I see controversial products like bird's nest soup, etc.

▲

BoneShard 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was a coffee snob, but now I'm buying coffee in Costco, you just have to do it online:

https://www.costco.com/p/-/kirkland-signature-organic-ethiop...

https://www.costco.com/p/-/mayorga-buenos-das-usda-organic-l...

I have no idea why do they not sell these(light roast) ones in warehouses.

▲

tristor an hour ago | parent [-]

My local Costco carries the fair trade artisanal coffee brand that is roasted in my city, just in a 3 pound bag of beans instead of a 1 pound bag of beans like at the bougie grocery store. I can understand not wanting the Kirkland brand coffee, but that is far from the only coffee brand for sale at Costco. I am a coffee snob of the highest order and I buy my beans at Costco.

	▲	Marsymars 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They've got decent beans, but you can't get anything with more exotic processing techniques, e.g. lactic or carbonic maceration. I get my beans for my summer cold brew at Costco, but my typical pour over beans elsewhere.

▲

OkayPhysicist 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whole Foods started wildly expensive, toned down a lot after the Amazon bought them, and then creeped back up to wildly expensive the last few years.

▲

acheron 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Huh, really? Re: Wegmans. For me they still have the best produce quality by far.

Agree their prices have gone up in general though.

	▲	b450 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's probably very store specific. If you know the Market Basket in Somerville, MA, it's got a legendary produce section. I've been to locations in NH with crap. IMO H-Mart is the safest bet in the Boston area for high quality produce (outside of farmers markets, natch)