Well, I don’t drink alcohol or go to seafood restaurants (unless I’m at the beach) or eat steak/go to steakhouses so your local chain would probably not be of interest to me. I’m not sure why you “don’t get” that other people don’t like the same things as you, such as chains? I said I would check at my Costco next time I was there in person and see if they had any gift cards I liked, but looking at their online offerings there is nothing that I would ever use. FIWW, I also never buy milk. We don’t drink it or use it, but I understand that lots of people do like it.
I buy mostly locally grown produce so am not interested in Costco’s mega quantities of berries or other produce. I can get locally grown strawberries at my co-op and have some in the fridge right now. We’re big farmer’s market shoppers.
I like Costco for some frozen stuff and shelf stable stuff and sometimes their non-food items. They have a yummy frozen vegetable Yakisoba that is great to have on hand in the freezer for a quick lunch. They also have a great deal on seaweed snacks. I’ve gotten some good deals on laundry detergent there and sometimes buy fizzy water. They had really good Toblerone bites at the holidays. I just like to support Costco because I like them as a company.
Our local Costco currently has gift cards to this 3 location “chain”. They’re incredibly dog friendly, bringing bowls of water, etc. There’s a location on our island!
I’m in NC and our farmer’s markets slow down in winter, but run year round. All produce is grown within 60 miles. My husband went today and brought home spinach, tomatoes, onions, kale, lettuce, fresh baked bread, a fresh bialy, carrots, garlic, and maybe a few more things. The local strawberries I have are NC grown in a greenhouse and I got them at our local natural food co-op.
That’s a good list. For Costco gift cards, I think one of the primary goals is increased sales volume, much like the in store products. Costco has a large enough customer base to have notable sales increase of almost anything sold at Costco, and many sellers are willing to reduce their margin on specific products in exchange for this benefit.
This isn’t the same as broadening customer base. I expect most people who are buying gift cards in Costco’s bulk $100 sizes are not new customers choosing to give the restaurant a try because they saw a gift card. They are primarily existing customers who are familiar with the restaurant. While they are familiar, there are still many similar alternative restaurants they could choose, so the restaurant with the gift card discounts gets chosen over alternatives more often.
Unlike simply offering lower menu prices, the discounted gift card also allows the restaurant to offer price discrimination. The restaurant can charge full price for their normal customer base who is willing to pay full price, and can offer a discounted price for the customers who wouldn’t purchase as much without the discount. Costco discounts also do not cheapen the brand name the same way as regular sales and such. Customers seem to treat Costco discounts separately from traditional sales.
Many of the restaurants have high enough margins that they are still going to have notable net profit after the discount, particularly when you consider that a significant portion of gift cards go unused, and customers rarely stop spending at exactly the gift card value.
