Cost Cutter

Ok. Can be pricey, and watch the expiration dates on what you buy… but holy mackerel buy the deli fried chicken… heavenly.

Friendly staff, good deli and restaurants. But bought some things here only to come to find they were expired. Its gross, expired dairy and pillsbury bread and cookie dough and some Kraft dressing that expired two months ago! Produce section has fruit flys and bruising on the fruits and veggies and a lot of the items I find are over priced. If I can go to the rite aid or drive to Bellingham I will wait.

Nice big store! The reason I am writing this review is because I had one of their maple bars and Bavarians (like a maple bar, but with chocolate) and they were incredible! They tasted just like I remember when I was a kid. I wish you had these stores in the Seattle area! There seemed to be lots of discounts on a all kinds of items!

Sold 3.5 stars for me, last chance to get some deals on junk food before heading back to the border.
The aisles are a bit more cramped together in some but going to the ice cream area on the left, it gets better ;)
Still don’t carry the Nutter Butter in wafers, just the cookies version.

Wow look what I had for lunch for under $ 7 at the Cost Cutter deli… 4 pieces of fried chicken, onion rings, and a pop! The fried chicken was really good! Fresh, hot, and delish… my only complaint is the batter was a bit too thick. I like it more like Church’s Chicken… thinner batter… Still you can’t beat the price… In Van City we’re paying double for a meal like this at Church’s!
The onion rings were so so… too much heat lamp love! When I come down to Blaine later in the week to pick up a package I’m coming here to try their deli chicken strips! Yummy!

Loved it. Great customer service and the price of soda on my trip was cheaper than Fred Meyer. If you have a car I’d still suggest going to Bellingham Fred Meyer as it’s bigger and has more (including, for the most part, better prices). But if your walking/​biking this is the store to go to.
Take the 375 to White Rock S and get off at King George Blvd @ 8^th Ave. Then bike to Pacific Hwy Crossing and go to the US Customs building. Lock your bike and walk in and wait (could be a while). Once you leave go to H st and turn left and it will be real close (you should be able to see it).

This store is good. I get so tired of the irritating drive down to Trader Joe’s etc.
Good selection of groceries, fine selection of wine and sundries. Tilamook cheeses and pepperoni! Couldn’t find the meat section at first but finally found it way at the back! (those sneaky butchers :-)

Between 2 and 3 stars.
I went to this store because I didn’t want to go all the way to Bellingham. AND they are definitely not as good as Trader Joe or Costco.
Milk and eggs are cheaper than Canada but when it comes to other processed/​packaged food, it’s pretty comparable to Walmart in terms of prices.
If you are in the area to get some gas and need some dairy or eggs, it’s not a bad place to go but otherwise, I would just skip it and go to Costco or Trader Joe’s instead.

King of the Processed Food!
When I need my relish/​chips/​cereal/​cherry coke/​weird mexican salsa fix satiated, this is where I head. All the greatness of a cavernous grocery store, filled to the brim with 15 different types of Oreos, American Cheese of dubious origin, and all the tortilla chips for 2 bucks you can stomach. Prices on most things are still cheaper than Canada, but it’s a good idea to know the going price on things to see if that dishwasher detergent really is a good deal or not…

When I don’t want to travel too far over the border after I get gas this is where I hit up.
Organic eggs and milk are a good price, as is the non-​organic cheese.
After I load up on that I peruse they store for other things that may be on sale.
Overall the prices are usually higher than what I pay in Canada except for a few things. Will I be back, for sure.

During high school and then up to the time I graduated from college, I worked in grocery stores. This store is truly one of the worst I’ve seen (the only ones even worse are owned by the same company): the display and advertised specials are often wiped out, the floors and general cleanliness are substandard, the bakery isn’t even good enough to be called bake-​off (their shipped in doughnuts are disgusting), the store is poorly maintained — look at restrooms. However, to pick on this one store isn’t really fair. The problems with this store are systemic problems that are present in almost all the stores that are owned and operated by Brown and Cole. This company has been stinking up the grocery industry for many many years. They have the reputation of buying ambitious, hungry and competitive young retail grocers, riding the wave of their hard work and then driving the stores into the ground. Probably the best example of this is the namesake that this Blaine store was named after. Years ago a startup company opened a new grocery store in Codata called Costcutter. The store was very large, had excellent departments and philosophy of selling tremendous volume at great prices. One of their best strategies was an automated cake doughnut machine that cranked thousands of fresh doughnuts all day long that they sold for either 10 cents each or 99 cents per dozen. They came in cinnamon sugar, plain, powdered sugar and plain and they sampled fresh ½ doughnuts on trays all day long. I know that many of their customers shopped there because of the smell and taste of those fresh doughnuts along with similar great value, low margin leaders from the other departments. When B&C bought this store, they were so happy about the reputation that they started an entire brand of stores with same name. But as always is the case with stupid B&C they almost immediately started optimizing the magic out of the formula and now that store is a dead dirty husk of what it used to be and one of the poorest performers in the region. I spoke to the bakery manager, a friendly acquaintance of mine, the day they permenantly shut down the doughnut machine and asked why they would eliminate one of the biggest draws the store has. He said they were doing it because it doesn’t make much money and because they are really stupid. This company then went on to buy a company that I worked for in college called Thrifty Foods and then have worked hard to use their stupidity to kill many of their successful stores as well. They blame their failure on unfair competition like Walmart, but Safeway and Fred Meyers are both union and competitive in this market. The problem isn’t the current market trends and never has been. The problem is a company that has always been poor to average operating without vision or any sophistication regarding the industry. Successful grocery stores are more than the profit sums of their individual departments. Costco, with their $ 1.50 giant hotdog and pop, understands this as does Safeway with their fresh $ 3.99/dozen bagels and Fred Meyer with many similar deals. These special values create loyal customers that buy in all departments. I just hope that a good company will purchase lazy, dirty and stupid B&C so we can have better store in Blaine. It can’t be too far off because I recently heard through the grapevine that their idiot CEO enclosed a letter with all his employees checks telling them that he’ll fire them if he catches eating or drinking a Kirkland or Fred Meyer product on their lunch break — no wonder morale and service are low. Good news — this is a sure sign that a grocery company is failing fast — seen it before.

Really it should be re-​named Cost More as the prices on some things are mindblowingly high.
BUT this place gets full marks for saving me from peeing my pants — literally.
I had to wait almost an hour in the truck border line and had to go pee the ENTIRE time. Then I get across the line and I just headed straight for Cost Cutter (why I didn’t stop at BK or a gas station I have NO idea — I guess I was just delusional).
I ran into CC after throwing my two little kids in a shopping cart and found that there was no bathroom along the front of the store. So I had to wait an excruciating minute before a cashier was done to ask where the potty was.
She told me back left corner.
For heaven’s sakes. The store was like a NASCAR track for me, as I weaved (hunched over, of course) around people, carts, down aisles until I saw it. I tried to push the cart into the bathroom, to no avail, so I took the kids out, told them to stand along a wall in the bathroom and proceeded to have the best three minutes I’ve had in recent memory.
Thank you CC. For that I went over and bought six boxes of cereal.