Those who use TikTok, or are familiar with Ed Davey’s dance routines on social media, may have heard of the ‘Costco Guys’. For those with an aversion to TikTok (or to Ed Davey), Andrew ‘A.J.’ Befumo Jr. and Eric ‘Big Justice’ Befumo are a father-and-son duo who became internet celebrities by gorging on food items in their local Costco in Florida and rating them on a ‘boom or doom’ scale. Cue 2.5 million followers and debut single ‘We Bring the Boom’ – which Davey chose as the soundtrack to his latest bid for online attention.
Patrick Maguire was probably right in the Times last week to say that this sort of soul-crushingly knuckleheaded viral fame justifies Oxford University Press’s decision to make ‘brain rot’ its word of the year. And yet I’m with A.J. and Big Justice. My father and I are devoted Costco Guys.
The wholesaler has everything. You can go intending to pick up some caramel pecan popcorn and come back with a four-poster bed. Costco is also cheap, though fortune favours the brave: heart-stopping bulk deals will appear and then disappear without warning. When cut-price Mutti tinned tomatoes materialised, I urgently instructed my father to buy a trolley load. He refused, insisting we didn’t have space for 50 cans at home. The next time we went shopping, the Mutti was gone. I was angry at him for days.
Why else do I prefer the vast warehouses of Costco to a regular supermarket? Well, they accept returns on basically anything. They also have an excellent optician on site. At checkout, they’ll scan your heavy goods without making you unload them from the trolley.
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