The landscape for grocery shopping has changed quite a bit in recent years.
Thanks in part to changed shopping habits post-covid, more customers prefer to buy their groceries and other staples from the comfort of their homes.
Related: Budget grocery store gets fancy Whole Foods-style feature
And in turn thanks to services from Amazon (AMZN) and Instacart (CART) , among others, we don't really need to leave home to get everyday essentials if we don't want to. So long as we're willing to pay a little extra — fees and tips — groceries will show up at our front doors without us having to do more than fill out a shopping list and click.
For many of us, this is good enough.
But those who still enjoy regular trips to the grocery store — particularly those hunting for specialty or limited-edition items — couldn't even fathom giving up that routine pleasure, which brings excitement and shimmer to our weekly errands.
If you fall into the latter group, you're likely frequenting members-only clubs like Costco (COST) and specialty grocers like Wegmans, Amazon's Whole Foods and or Trader Joe's.
These grocery stores function more as experiences, whereby you wind through aisles set up to entice and interest you in novelty items rather than enabling you to get in and get out in record time.
Some view this as a time-wasting inconvenience. But for those of us who believe 60 varieties of cheese and four aisles of wines are just scratching the surface, a specialty grocery store is a modern marvel to behold.
Costco gets a popular new item
For the more enthusiastic shoppers a trip to the grocery store doesn't even have to occur out of necessity. Some customers will simply frequent their favorite markets because they want to see which products might be new or exciting.
This is often the case at places like Trader Joe's, which regularly gets novelty items to celebrate different holidays or incoming seasons. The store often stocks limited-edition items, which boosts excitement around them and prompts them to sell out quickly.
They don't always have to be limited-edition to sell out, though.
Trader Joe's routinely sells out of year-round everyday items because they're hard to find at conventional grocery stores.
One such example is the now-famous and all-too-popular kimbap, a Korean-style sushi featuring greens, root veggies and pickles around a base of braised tofu and wrapped in seaweed. It's viral online and regularly sells out, so it's possible that you've never seen it at your local shop.
In fact most Trader Joe's limit sales of such items to one per customer, particularly when the buzz around it is heavy, which is pretty much all the time.
Now, Costco is getting in on the action, offering a much larger bulk version of the Trader Joe's favorite, according to some eagle-eyed customers.
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The bagged item, available in the frozen aisle, features six rolls of Kimbap, an eight-ounce pack, for $18.79. And those who've tried it say it's more than tasty, and is cheaper per piece than the Trader Joe's version.
"You get 6 kimbap for $18, making it slightly cheaper than TJ's," one Reddit user posted on the Costco subreddit.
The rolls are ready after a quick 2 1/2-minute microwave, and users say "the rice texture is spot on."
"Yeah they were almost sold out when I grabbed a pack this week. Compared it go the trader joes one and it is very similar, it seems the Costco one holds its shape better," another wrote.
