Jul 17, 2017
Costco Products without the Membership
One of the chain supermarkets in our area, Yutoku, sells limited Costco food products. Without going all the way to a Costco location, and for the same price, we can can buy some Costco items without a membership card.
There are usually packaged things like tons of kitchen towels, hot cocoa packets, and teas available. In addition I've seen huge (normal in the US) two-packs (1.36 Kilograms each jar) of Skippy peanut butter – for about 2000 yen. I'm tempted to get this because I like peanut butter and it's so cheap compared with buying tiny jars (the 340 g size is usually around 500 yen). The problem is, it's So Much peanut butter, and my husband doesn't really like it. I'd be on my own and it would take forever to use it all. (Or I'd eat a ton of it and gain weight, which is what I'm scared of when I see most of the products from Costco). I'm considering finding someone to split the two-pack with.
It's not on a normal schedule that I know of, but one time, I saw some extra Costco products in the bakery section. I was a little shocked to see six packs of giant muffins, bags of dinner rolls, boxed croissants, a giant cheese tart, big tiramisu and berry cakes, and 'Round Pizza.'
So... the Costco pizza they were selling was too big. It was take and bake style, and if you don't even have an oven in Japan, that's sort of normal. If you do, chances are it's the size of a dorm microwave in the US. I measured the inside tray in our convection oven / microwave and it's 20 cm across. These pizzas were 40 cm. They were not a bad deal at all, but it would be impossible for me to bake them without cutting them into quarters first. Maybe that would be the perfect amount and we could freeze the rest? How do normal people do this?
In conclusion, it's kinda cool that I can buy Costco products at the local store. But... I probably won't because:
A. They're way too much food / too big, and
B. I don't want to get fat.
2 Comments
KamaT
on Jul 18
It was interesting to read this as I've found that my local supermarket has a random collection of bit n bobs from 'supermarkets' in the U.S. and the U.K. I used to be able to get chocolate raisins (a personal favorite) which were an ASDA home brand. ASDA being from the U.K. (but owned by Wallmart, I think). They've gone now but the same supermarket (a Seiyu) still sells other stuff from Wallmart. The other day I was in an Aeon and got some granola that was from Waitrose (another British supermarket).
helloalissa
on Jul 21
@Tomuu There's a supermarket in Kyushu called Sunny, and I noticed staff name tags have Walmart logos on them. Just looked up if their locations exist in the Tokyo area, and turns out they are a Seiyu company. There you go. I found really great snacks at the Ito-Yokado (same company as 7-11) when I was in the area, if there's one near you. I feel like I've seen chocolate covered raisins somewhere... but maybe I'm thinking of the mugi choco which looks similar.