An old idea I’d love to see come back would be the mashup. There was a moment where it appeared possible that all the ‘next big things’ would be built using a mix of services. Gmail mixed with Facebook chat mixed with RSS feeds all overlayed on a Yahoo Map with contextual YouTube pops. In the end all we really got were Google Maps next to physical addresses on websites, social share buttons, and Facebook Logins. (I know there are more but wide adoption is scant).
It would be killer to see a collection of micro-mashable services emerge to expose data, manipulation, visualization, sharing and interactivity (and probably billing).
It should, for example, take a day to build a page that lets you analyze real estate deals based on proximity to McDonalds locations, crime events, R v D political donations, and mentions (or lack of mentions) of Kanye West by local Social Media users.
By the way, I’m not saying this is a good idea, it is probably a bad idea. I’m just saying ideas like this should be almost as easy to hack together as a formatted blog post.
It is not unlike Prime Video and Prime Music (among others). When you run a membership program you create offers that increase the perceived value of the membership and engagement with your ecosystem. Similar is Costco gas, people wouldn’t drive out of their way for the discount if they didn’t already pay the membership. And while you are there you might as well pick up four times the bread you need, more milk than you consume in a week, a new camera (that was probably cheaper online), and a hot dog on your way out. Getting the value out of that $100 membership leads people to consume far more than they normally would.
While true I don't think this is widely known, and even less widely practiced. For those who are unaware, you just need go in through the exit to avoid the card checkers and that's where the food is.
Neither being a member or being accompanied by a member is required to walk in the door. You don't even need to be a member to shop there provided you have a Costco Cash Card [0]. As well, there are at least a few Costcos where the concession stand is outside [1]
So if I give my Costco-member friend $100 and ask her to buy me four $25 Costco Cash cards, would that let me make four trips without buying my own membership? That seems like all I'd need in a year...
This is accurate. You need only to have a costco cash card to get the Costco price on the goods in store. That cash card does not need to encompass the entire price of the transaction, as your credit card can make up the rest.
I've heard this touted as a "hack" but this makes absolute economic sense for Costco -- they get an advance on your purchase and get you into the store to potentially see the value in signing up.
I tried that for a while in lieu of membership. Their employees certainly gave me a hard time over this: stink eye, calling the manager, chiding me for doing this loudly and openly, etc.
Thus, while it is possible, their devout employees don't like it and go out of their way to make one feel like a leper for not being a member.
You do not need to be a member to access the food court, alcohol sales, or pharmacy. You will need to stop at member services and wait in line to get a temporary pass. It's a deliberate hassle, but by various laws Costco can't stop you from accessing those services.
You can definitely get alcohol w/o a membership. I think it might be a state-by-state thing, but in some states it’s illegal to require a membership for alcohol purchases, so you can buy alcohol even if you don’t have a Costco membership.
The food court I'm not as sure about, but in both cases I've walked into a Costco with no membership and they were fine with it.
Almost every Costco I've been to, the food vending is a window on the outside of the building (so before the checkpoint).
And, at the ones where the food vending is on the inside, it's on the "paid" side of the cash registers. You can get to this area just by claiming you're "going to member services", since that's also on that side, and it's where you go when you forget your card (and so can't show membership at the checkpoint).
* Almost every Costco I've been to, the food vending is a window on the outside of the building (so before the checkpoint).*
I've never seen a Costco with the food vending in a window on the outside of the building. I've always seen it against the wall after the checkout. Which is also after the checkpoint.
I think a window on the outside of the building only works in moderate climates. I don't see it working in Phoenix or Minneapolis.
The membership checkers are there to give members the feeling of exclusivity and belonging. They do not generally turn people away and will accept basically any reason from "meeting someone" to no response at all, in my experience. But I haven't been to more than half dozen Costco's, so can't speak broadly.
I'm only consuming "far more than I normally would" if I'm routinely throwing away things I bought from CostCo, unconsumed.
I don't. Nor does anyone else I know.
It's just consumption moved around in time.
I know, I know, it may be aesthetically distasteful to you to see people walking out with 36 rolls of toilet paper instead of six. It may be hard not to sneer at the poor people trapped on the capitalist treadmill.
But you should get over it, because in most ways you're better off when people shop at CostCo, because buying that way and storing things at home for a time is much more packaging and environmentally efficient that packing things into little bundles to be bought every day. And buying like that also minimizes the little bites being taken out by middlemen who are doing the packaging into little bundles. And a car trip taken to CostCo that fills the car is more efficient than lots of little trips to the grocery store.
I suspect this is the real source of the hostility, rather than aesthetics: Costco represents, in general, a larger-land-footprint, car-dependent, suburban (or even semi-rural) lifestyle.
There's likely something of a false dichotomy at work here, as well, in that there could be Costco-compatible dense-city living, but that doesn't seem to be true currently.
I shop at Costco regularly (once every two weeks at least, sometimes weekly). Yes I gasp drive a car. But I put less than 3k miles on my car a year since I work from home. Maybe shopping at Costco isn't the problem for most people. It's working in an office.
To clarify, my point wasn't about the driving itself, but rather, what both driving and Costco (and bulk purchases in general) represent, which is incompatible with a walkable, high-density city.
I'm confident some people also object to the car use itself, but that's way too general a topic.
I mean, I agree, in the sense that I also like to buy in bulk and save a lot on things I use a lot this way. But it is true that a membership makes people shop at a store more to "get their money's worth" for the membership.
Your examples don't makes sense, as bread and milk (which Costco sells as multi-packs) keep fine in storage. Buying perishables and junk food would be a better example.
Costco electronics prices are competitive and have the best return policy and practice in the industry.
Frozen bread lasts for ~6 months to a 1 year. Which is hardly going to be an issue for most people.
Unopened milk does not last nearly as long. Still, it can last for ~3 weeks at home depending on how it's preserved, how old is was when you got it, and if you keep your fridge cold enough. Which again should be plenty if you actually use milk.
Most people don't freeze bread and I think most people have probably experienced not finishing a carton of milk fast enough or having bread go moldy on them.
Really the trick to bulk buying (besides liberal use of your freezer) is only bulk-buying things you actually use a lot of. I'll buy tomatoes at Costco because I'll eat them but I don't eat nearly enough apples for buying a massive thing of apples to make sense.
This is correct. I don't eat enough bread (or bagels) to warrant buying entire loaves at a time, even, and they will grow mold before I can eat them. Freezing them works great for me and prevents mold.
Yeah, you can't tell the difference. You can even microwave them for 30 seconds instead of slowly defrosting and if you're toasting you can't really tell the difference.
I guess it depends on the definition of "quickly" and also where you live.
In some cities I've lived, the expiration date of milk was often two or three weeks out. In other cities, it was 10 days maximum.
I think it's because dairies (and cows) are not equally plentiful in every part of the country.
One thing I have noticed is that in the places where regular milk expires in 10 days, the organic milk (which one family member drinks) doesn't expire for a month or more.
Sell by dates for eggs and milk vary by state in many cases, for milk I believe Montana has the strictest one (10-12 days after pasteurization) but I've seen references to at least 20 states having their own regulations.
Without dates and metrics you can’t measure progress. Like mile markers along the road (back before GPS / Smartphones). But without continuous, high trust, collaborative conversation you can’t actually make progress. That’s the gasoline powering you down the road. The goal should be Disneyland (shouldn’t it always be Disneyland?), not the next mile marker.
I set a goal of using my feet to walk around and engage team members in 5 work conversations (unscheduled) each day. The change in culture and the identification of problems, road blocks, oppertunities has been eye opening. As a natural introvert who’d rather be heads down it has made me much more effective in the team.
I find that as long as it isn't every day and I show up to ask about their public deadlines, compliment them on progress, and offer to help where they are stuck that people don't react like it is a disruption.
I more take some time to roam each day and if people aren’t deep in activity or meetings check in at that point. Afternoons are great as folks tend to be low blood sugar and more opt to be pushed back from their desks, etc.
As far as I can tell they like it. If it is a topic area we've previously discussed or tried to reason the best way forward they will now often proactively reach out when they need help or want someone to tell them how awesome they just were.
We're looking for three (3) reporting and analytics focused engineers. We are on an Azure and .NET stack so the more SQL Server, Power BI, and C# you know the better, but we'll take people coming out of other software stacks as well.
Company is very successful, boot strapped from $0 to over $100 Million in revenue and growing very quickly. Still a great startup culture and a lot of future opportunity.
Insured by the book Brunch is Hell I’ve started a soup in game night for friends and should-be-friends forvthis very reason: create a platform where we can put in the time to build closer friendships.
I once created a similar problem. I built a tracking and split testing system designed around a list of features activated during a page load. So a single page load might be described like:
root,signin,bluebutton
Where bluebutton was a design we were testing for our signin page. Of course once bluebutton worked and had run for a while everyone was afraid to change it in case there was a dependency of some kind. So the Facebook login that replaced the old signin would look like:
root,signin,bluebutton,fbookredirect
Even though no sign in page was shown let alone a bluebutton.
Late last year I started getting up at 5:05, driving to the gym while listening to scripture, swimming, showering, driving back, and then starting coffee for the wife, breakfast for the family, and lunches for the kids. The exercise and alone time really feel like they slow time down and let me get a lot more done for the rest of the day. But it is hard to get up that early.
It would be killer to see a collection of micro-mashable services emerge to expose data, manipulation, visualization, sharing and interactivity (and probably billing).
It should, for example, take a day to build a page that lets you analyze real estate deals based on proximity to McDonalds locations, crime events, R v D political donations, and mentions (or lack of mentions) of Kanye West by local Social Media users.
By the way, I’m not saying this is a good idea, it is probably a bad idea. I’m just saying ideas like this should be almost as easy to hack together as a formatted blog post.