Trader Joe's Vs Costco: Which Grocery-Brand Vodka Is Cheaper?

A bottle of decent vodka is a must-have in a well-stocked kitchen, whether you're using it to make boozy Jell-O shots or putting it to work in whipping up crunchy fried chicken. Unless your household is teetotal — and nothing wrong with that — your bar cart and your cooking both demand a reliable spirit. When cost is an issue (and that applies to most home chefs), you may be wondering who has the best deals on grocery store vodka. Trader Joe's and Costco are both known for their great prices, and both sell alcohol — sometimes; more on that in a bit — so what gives? As it turns out, #wedidthemath and Costco wins out in a way that's not even close.

Both Costco's Kirkland Signature and Trader Joe's house label produce a couple of vodkas. For the purpose of comparison, we're going to discard Costco's French vodka (although we may know the brand behind it!) and TJ's 10x Distilled Small Batch Vodka since the two are too dissimilar for direct cross-examination. The most alike products are Trader Joe's TX Vodka, an American product that's 40% alcohol by volume and 80 proof. It's distilled six times, just like the Kirkland Signature American Vodka, which shares all the same stats. At first glance, the TX Vodka may seem cheaper with its $9.99 price tag, until you realize that's for 750 milliliters of product. The Costco bottle is $13.69 for 1.75 liters, over twice the content. For less than three dollars more, you get more than double the vodka when you buy from Costco, which puts the warehouse club way, way ahead in the "get a good deal" liquor stakes.

Local liquor laws, which can be tricky to navigate, add complexity to the equation when you're trying to buy vodka from either Costco or Trader Joe's. Most likely because Trader Joe's is considered a grocery store while Costco, being bigger and having a more varied assortment of stock, is a general merchandise retailer. Costco can sell hard alcohol in most American states, while Trader Joe's is quite limited in its ability to do so. Many Trader Joe's locations can only sell beer and/or wine, but not vodka. Therefore, unless you live in a state where Costco can't sell liquor either — and there are only a small handful of these locales — Costco, which is cheaper to start with, may be the only accessible option between the two, anyway. Note that, in some locations, you might not even need a Costco membership to be able to access its liquor store!

If you are a big fan of both Costco and Trader Joe's, as many of our readership happen to be, you'll understand the fact that most shoppers have clear preferences when it comes to certain items sold by one or the other. The two retailers are very different stores, and they have different specialties. When it comes to vodka, not only is Costco the place for a cheaper spirit, but, for much of the United States, Trader Joe's might not even be an option. For our money, the choice is as clear as a glass of vodka on the rocks.