I went shopping at Costco and will never make the same mistake again

I like to think of myself as a bit of a Costco pro. My husband only signed up for a card a few months ago, admittedly, but we’ve been several times since, have tried out plenty of the ‘must buy’ foods, figured out what’s not worth spending our money on and learned how to spot a great deal.

But perhaps I got a bit overconfident. Our last trip taught me that we’re still learning what it takes to be a smart Costco shopper.

We usually do our weekly food shop on a Monday and every couple of weeks, we’ll head to Costco before Asda to see if we can pick up any bargains in bulk. This time, for reasons I won’t bore you with, we ended up heading over to the Coventry warehouse on a Sunday instead.

Read more: I went to Costco for the first time and there are two things I wish I’d known

And before we’d even got there, we started doubting our decision. The queue to get into the car park was all the way down the road and we could see on the approach that the car park was rammed.

Once we were in, it took us another 10 minutes to find a parking space and someone actually got out of the passenger seat of the car behind us and stood in the space we were indicating to pull into to try to save it for themselves. It was bedlam.

We grabbed a trolley and rushed inside, keen to get in and out of there as fast as possible, but we quickly realised that wasn’t going to be possible. I’d never seen the place so busy.

The queue for the till stretched halfway across the length of the store and was blocking access to some of the aisles. People were struggling to squeeze their trolleys past each other and causing a traffic jam in the booze aisle and the bakery section looked like it had been ransacked. It was like being in Primark on a Saturday.

We still managed to nab a few bargains and staff were doing a fabulous job of replenishing the free samples as fast as shoppers were scoffing them so we were able to get a look-in.

After half-filling our trolley with breakfast bars, Diet Coke cans, a box of wine, seeded bagels, spicy chicken tenders, a massive block of Cathedral City, some washing detergent and a huge tub of Lurpak, we reluctantly joined the back of the queue, which was showing no signs of easing.

It took us about half an hour to get to the front – faster than we were anticipating, but still probably triple the time we usually wait when shopping on a Monday. Given how busy the supermarkets can get on a weekend, we should have expected it, but we certainly won’t be making the same mistake again.