Cuban man marvels at Costco food choices and American abundance

A married couple who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba have been going viral on social media, with wife Marissa Diaz sharing their food-focused videos — and husband Yoel Diaz marveling at the head-spinning array of choices most Americans have on a daily basis.

The couple’s TikTok account, @yoelandmari, has nearly half a million followers, plus millions of likes — and now they’ve shared their story on camera with Fox News Digital. (See the video at the top of this article.) 

“It’s impressive. It’s beautiful,” said Yoel Diaz about Costco in particular.

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Yoel Diaz, who arrived here in 2021 on a K1 visa and then applied for residency, told Fox News Digital he actually felt dizzy walking inside the big box store for the first time.

He loved seeing the abundance of meat available, he said. 

“We Cubans love the meat,” he said. 

The Arizona-based couple grew up as family friends living on the same street in a province west of Havana. 

Yoel Diaz worked as a computer science teacher in Cuba, earning very little money — and in America in 2022, he earned his very first paycheck from UPS, which he celebrated joyfully. 

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He said the “simple” ability in America to walk around a grocery store and fill up a shopping cart with his own choices – something he’d only seen previously in movies – feels like a gift to him.

“This country has given me the opportunity to be a human,” he said.

By contrast, Marissa Diaz said grocery stores back in their native Cuba are divided by those who have access to dollars from their family abroad — and those who don’t. 

“In Cuba, the medium salary is around $40 a month, so you have to choose [very carefully] what you’re going to buy,” she said. 

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“[Those who] get paid in Cuban pesos don’t have access [to those stores and instead] have to go to a bodega, which is very limited with what you can get.”

She said that on WhatsApp and other messaging groups, Cubans share with each other the foods that are available – from milk to butter – at any given time.

“It’s not like in the United States, where you never have to think about if there’s going to be butter in the grocery stores or not,” she said.

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Marissa Diaz said the only time she’s experienced something similar in the United States was during the COVID pandemic. 

“That’s what it’s like being in Cuba, but all the time,” she said. 

Yoel Diaz described the ability to go to a grocery store as a privilege. 

The same goes for living here and being able to put food on the table, he said.

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“[You] can have whatever brand of food you want, whatever meal. You can go [down] the street [and buy] whatever coffee you want,” he said.

“We don’t have that [in Cuba],” he added. “My mom is dying for [a] coffee. She knows [what a privilege it is].”

The couple couldn’t help sharing thoughts about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-declared Democratic socialist who’s proposed a pilot program of government-owned grocery stores in a bid to lower costs and reduce food insecurity in underserved areas.

“We have seen time and time again that government is inefficient in distributing things,” Marissa Diaz said. She said it failed in Cuba and is “not sure why he thinks New York City is going to be different.”

Yoel Diaz said Americans who support this particular candidate should “be careful” of what they’re asking for – something he said he learned in Cuba.

Diaz currently works in maintenance for an apartment complex – and continues to be thankful for what this country offers.