Today, my family and I went to Costco after I came home from Kumon. For the first time, I realized just how much Americans bulk buy. Costco is a wholesale store. Obviously they sell everything in bigger amounts. But how many bags of chips does one person need! I saw a woman with three boxes of the little bags of chips. It was sort of ridiculous.
Don't even get me started on my family. We'll go into Costco for some milk and bananas, and we'll come with milk, bananas, fruits, taquitos, pizzas that no one will eat for about 6 months, cookies, chairs, a couple of books, and sometimes, when we're being really rebellious, movie tickets. When you go into Costco, you never spend any less than 50 bucks. It's unheard of. I don't think that in other countries, stores like Costco exist. Usually the quantity in foreign countries is pretty small. So why in the world do Americans buy SO. MUCH. STUFF?
I think one part of it is the samples that Costco gives out. Who can resist free food?!?! So then, you'll go and try out this free food and realize you like whatever it is their selling and you'll ending up buying the heart attack in box. Then you'll go home, eat it for a day, and then realize that you never really liked the food in the first place. So, it'll sit in your fridge for six months until your mom forces you to eat it, or she just gives up and throws all of it out, promising to never buy you anything again.
Moral of the story? Food samples are nicely wrapped packages that taste divine sent from the devil himself. Never have them.
Anyways, food sampling is probably one of the reasons that people spend so much money at Costco. Another reason? The fact that Americans eat a lot of food. My family is Indian. We have small stomachs and this is a fact. We'll go to an Italian restaurant order two dishes for the four of us, and we'll still have leftovers. If you look at what others eat, they'll order three appetizers, then one dish per family member, and then they'll clean everything off with dessert. And no leftovers. Now I'm not saying that every American eats a lot, or that every Indian eats so little, I'm just stating what I've seen. So maybe that's a reason why Americans bulk buy. But that doesn't explain why my family (who we've already established doesn't each much of anything) still buys over 100 dollars worth of food when we only really need maybe 45.
The answer may be laziness. Don't want to go to the grocery story every single week? Just buy a whole bunch at once and you're set for the rest of the month! My family definitely does this and I have a feeling that many Americans probably do too. Costco (and Walmart, but that's a different story) is a godsend for those lazy people who just hate going to the grocery store. Bulk buying to the rescue!
So we have food samples, big eating and laziness all as factors to why Americans buy so much in bulk. Who knows why we really do. It's the way of life here, but it's certainly a strange sort of thing to do.
Don't even get me started on my family. We'll go into Costco for some milk and bananas, and we'll come with milk, bananas, fruits, taquitos, pizzas that no one will eat for about 6 months, cookies, chairs, a couple of books, and sometimes, when we're being really rebellious, movie tickets. When you go into Costco, you never spend any less than 50 bucks. It's unheard of. I don't think that in other countries, stores like Costco exist. Usually the quantity in foreign countries is pretty small. So why in the world do Americans buy SO. MUCH. STUFF?
I think one part of it is the samples that Costco gives out. Who can resist free food?!?! So then, you'll go and try out this free food and realize you like whatever it is their selling and you'll ending up buying the heart attack in box. Then you'll go home, eat it for a day, and then realize that you never really liked the food in the first place. So, it'll sit in your fridge for six months until your mom forces you to eat it, or she just gives up and throws all of it out, promising to never buy you anything again.
Moral of the story? Food samples are nicely wrapped packages that taste divine sent from the devil himself. Never have them.
Anyways, food sampling is probably one of the reasons that people spend so much money at Costco. Another reason? The fact that Americans eat a lot of food. My family is Indian. We have small stomachs and this is a fact. We'll go to an Italian restaurant order two dishes for the four of us, and we'll still have leftovers. If you look at what others eat, they'll order three appetizers, then one dish per family member, and then they'll clean everything off with dessert. And no leftovers. Now I'm not saying that every American eats a lot, or that every Indian eats so little, I'm just stating what I've seen. So maybe that's a reason why Americans bulk buy. But that doesn't explain why my family (who we've already established doesn't each much of anything) still buys over 100 dollars worth of food when we only really need maybe 45.
The answer may be laziness. Don't want to go to the grocery story every single week? Just buy a whole bunch at once and you're set for the rest of the month! My family definitely does this and I have a feeling that many Americans probably do too. Costco (and Walmart, but that's a different story) is a godsend for those lazy people who just hate going to the grocery store. Bulk buying to the rescue!
So we have food samples, big eating and laziness all as factors to why Americans buy so much in bulk. Who knows why we really do. It's the way of life here, but it's certainly a strange sort of thing to do.
I think another reason that other countries don't "Shop in bulk" is because many other countries don't have houses that are big enough to store all of that food.
ReplyDeleteyeah, you can't really enter costco without spending A LOT. One time, my mom went there and bought only two items, and the people working there were confused and surprised.SO yeah, it's obvious that we tend to buy way more than we need to.
ReplyDelete