Comment by b450

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.