The Secret World of Trader Joe’s

Hey, how about a feel good story about …. a business?

My favorite food store ever;  … zero debt, great prices without sacrificing quality (practically zero Chinese shit!), awesome products, extremely friendly and helpful staff …. hey, it’s still possible to be successful in America.

And it’s just a five minute drive from our house!

The only thing I hate about TJ’s is that they have a fairly high turnover rate. Ms. Freud and I get absolutely hooked on something … and then it’s gone forever!  That’s bullshit, man!! My two favorites were genuine Italian Lemon Ice (a package of four served inside actual lemons), and Coconut Ice Cream (served inside actual coconut shells). Bastards!

OK, if you don’t have a TJ’s near you, or you just don’t give a shit about supermarkets …. that’s OK.  Instead of doom&gloom (just for one thread!), how about sharing your favorite store, whether bricks&mortar, or online …. many of us are always looking out for new great deals.

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Inside the secret world of Trader Joe’s

Apple’s retail stores aren’t the only place where lines form these days. It’s 7:30 on a July morning, and already a crowd has gathered for the opening of Trader Joe’s newest outpost, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The waiting shoppers chat about their favorite Trader Joe’s foods, and a woman in line launches into a monologue comparing the retailer’s West Coast and East Coast locations. Another customer suggests that the chain will be good for Chelsea, even though the area is already brimming with places to buy groceries, including Whole Foods and several upscale food boutiques.

But Trader Joe’s is no ordinary grocery chain. It’s an offbeat, fun discovery zone that elevates food shopping from a chore to a cultural experience. It stocks its shelves with a winning combination of low-cost, yuppie-friendly staples (cage-free eggs and organic blue agave sweetener) and exotic, affordable luxuries — Belgian butter waffle cookies or Thai lime-and-chili cashews — that you simply can’t find anyplace else.

Employees dress in goofy trademark Hawaiian shirts, hand stickers out to your squirming kids, and cheerfully refund your money if you’re unhappy with a purchase — no questions asked. At the Chelsea store opening, workers greeted customers with high-fives and free cookies. Try getting that kind of love at the Piggly Wiggly.

It’s little wonder that Trader Joe’s is one of the hottest retailers in the U.S. It now boasts 344 stores in 25 states and Washington, D.C., and strip-mall operators and consumers alike aggressively lobby the chain, based in Monrovia, Calif., to come to their towns. A Trader Joe’s brings with it good jobs, and its presence in your community is like an affirmation that you and your neighbors are worldly and smart.

The privately held company’s sales last year were roughly $8 billion, the same size as Whole Foods’ WFMI and bigger than those of Bed Bath & Beyond, No. 314 on the Fortune 500 list.  Unlike those massive shopping emporiums, Trader Joe’s has a deliberately scaled-down strategy: It is opening just five more locations this year. The company selects relatively small stores with a carefully curated selection of items. (Typical grocery stores can carry 50,000 stock-keeping units, or SKUs; Trader Joe’s sells about 4,000 SKUs, and about 80% of the stock bears the Trader Joe’s brand. See “Private-Label Chic.”) TL LINK The result: Its stores sell an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double Whole Foods’. The company has no debt and funds all growth from its own coffers.

You’d think Trader Joe’s would be eager to trumpet its success, but management is obsessively secretive. There are no signs with the company’s name or logo at headquarters in Monrovia, about 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Few customers realize the chain is owned by Germany’s ultra-private Albrecht family, the people behind the Aldi Nord supermarket empire. (A different branch of the family controls Aldi Süd, parent of the U.S. Aldi grocery chain.) Famous in Germany for not talking to the press, the Albrechts have passed their tightlipped ways on to their U.S. business: Trader Joe’s and its CEO, Dan Bane, declined repeated requests to speak to Fortune, and the company has never participated in a major story about its business operations.

Some of that may be because Trader Joe’s business tactics are often very much at odds with its image as the funky shop around the corner that sources its wares from local farms and food artisans. Sometimes it does, but big, well-known companies also make many of Trader Joe’s products. Those Trader Joe’s pita chips? Made by Stacy’s, a division of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay PEP . On the East Coast much of its yogurt is supplied by Danone’s Stonyfield Farm. And finicky foodies probably don’t like to think about how Trader Joe’s scale enables the chain to sell a pound of organic lemons for $2.

To get inside the mysterious world of Trader Joe’s, Fortune spent two months speaking with former executives, competitors, industry analysts, and suppliers, most of whom asked not to be named. What emerged is a picture of a business at a crossroads: As the company expands into new markets and adds stores — analysts say the grocer could easily triple its size in the coming years — it must find a way to maintain its small-store vibe with customers. “They see themselves as a national chain of neighborhood specialty grocery stores,” says Mark Mallinger, a Pepperdine University professor who has done research for the company. “It means you want to create an image of mom and pop as you grow.” That’s no easy task. Just ask Starbucks SBUX CEO Howard Schultz, whose expansion has been a huge success but has come at the expense of credibility with some coffee aficionados. The alternative is to remain a small brand with unflagging devotees, like outdoor clothier Patagonia. If it can get the balance right, Trader Joe’s may be one of the few retailers to marry cult appeal with scale. Just don’t expect anyone from the company to talk about it.

Who’s a fan of Trader Joe’s? Young Hollywood types like Jessica Alba are regularly photographed brandishing Trader Joe’s shopping bags — but Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor reportedly is a fan too. “What’s not to like?” says Costco COST co-founder and CEO Jim Sinegal. “They’re very good retailers, and we admire them a lot.” Visit a Trader Joe’s early in the day, and there are senior citizens on fixed incomes shopping for bargains; on weekends and evenings a well-heeled crowd takes over. Kevin Kelley, whose consulting firm Shook Kelley has researched Trader Joe’s for its competitors, jokes that the typical shopper is the “Volvo-driving professor who could be CEO of a Fortune 100 company if he could get over his capitalist angst.”

The rise of Trader Joe’s reflects Americans’ changing attitudes about food. While Trader Joe’s is not a health food chain, it stocks a dizzying array of organics. It sells billions of dollars in food and beverages that years ago would have been considered gourmet but are now mainstays of the U.S. diet, such as craft beers and white-cheese popcorn. The genius of Trader Joe’s is staying a step ahead of Americans’ increasingly adventurous palates with interesting new items that shoppers will collectively buy in big volumes.

The retailer’s foodie roots and quirky in-store culture date to the original Joe. Joe Coulombe (pronounced COO-lomb), now 80, opened the first Trader Joe’s 43 years ago in Pasadena to serve a sophisticated — but strapped — consumer. He named the store Trader Joe’s to evoke images of the South Seas. He stocked it with convenience-store items and good booze, and at one time his shop boasted the world’s largest assortment of California wine. (Decades later Trader Joe’s would again become famous for wine, specifically its $1.99 Charles Shaw label, better known as “Two-Buck Chuck.”) Coulombe then added health food — a seemingly odd combination that totally worked in 1970s California. By the late 1970s he was operating more than 20 locations.

The company’s success did not go unnoticed. German grocery mogul Theo Albrecht, who died in July at age 88, coveted Trader Joe’s — not as part of a major U.S. expansion but as a smart financial investment. Even in the early days, Trader Joe’s appeal was its narrow but zany selection and loyal customers, recalls Dieter Brandes, who did due diligence on the company for Albrecht. “It was fantastic. It was different,” he says. In 1979, Coulombe sold his company to Albrecht. Coulombe tells Fortune he “can’t remember” the selling price.

The Albrechts, who own Trader Joe’s through a family trust, have generally stayed out of the business. They visit the U.S. operation about once a year, and word around the office spreads that “the Germans” are coming. Coulombe stayed on without a management contract for a decade; in 1987 he hired John Shields, a fraternity brother from his undergraduate days at Stanford, who was CEO until 2001. Under Shields’ reign, Trader Joe’s expanded outside California to Arizona in 1993 and to the Pacific Northwest in 1995. Although executives worried that Northeastern shoppers wouldn’t “get” Trader Joe’s, the company in 1996 leapfrogged the country and opened two stores in places crawling with college professors and other bargain-hunting elites: Brookline and Cambridge, both outside Boston.

Push your way into the bustling Trader Joe’s in Manhattan’s Union Square neighborhood, and it’s hard to believe that executives ever worried that East Coasters wouldn’t groove on the experience. Make no mistake: A typical family couldn’t do all its shopping at the store. There’s no baby food, toothpicks, or other necessities. But for this crowd of urbanites and college kids, Trader Joe’s is nirvana.

A closer look at its selection of items underscores the brilliance of Coulombe’s limited-selection, high-turnover model. Take peanut butter. Trader Joe’s sells 10 varieties. That might sound like a lot, but most supermarkets sell about 40 SKUs. For simplicity’s sake, say both a typical supermarket and a Trader Joe’s sell 40 jars a week. Trader Joe’s would sell an average of four of each type, while the supermarket might sell only one. With the greater turnover on a smaller number of items, Trader Joe’s can buy large quantities and secure deep discounts. And it makes the whole business — from stocking shelves to checking out customers — much simpler.

Swapping selection for value turns out not to be much of a tradeoff. Customers may think they want variety, but in reality too many options can lead to shopping paralysis. “People are worried they’ll regret the choice they made,” says Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of The Paradox of Choice. “People don’t want to feel they made a mistake.” Studies have found that buyers enjoy purchases more if they know the pool of options isn’t quite so large. Trader Joe’s organic creamy unsalted peanut butter will be more satisfying if there are only nine other peanut butters a shopper might have purchased instead of 39. Having a wide selection may help get customers in the store, but it won’t increase the chances they’ll buy. (It also explains why so often people are on their cellphones at the supermarket asking their significant other which detergent to get.) “It takes them out of the purchasing process and puts them into a decision-making process,” explains Stew Leonard Jr., CEO of grocer Stew Leonard’s, which also subscribes to the “less is more” mantra.

Customers accept that Trader Joe’s has only two kinds of pudding or one kind of polenta because they trust that those few items will be very good. “If they’re going to get behind only one jar of Greek olives, then they’re sure as heck going to make sure it’s the most fabulous jar of Greek olives they can find for the price,” explains one former employee. To ferret out those wow items, Trader Joe’s has four top buyers, called product developers, do some serious globetrotting. A former senior executive told me that Trader Joe’s biggest R&D expense is travel for those product-finding missions. Trade shows that feature the flavor of the moment “are for rookies,” a former buyer said. Trader Joe’s doesn’t pick up on trends — it sets them.

The other dozen or so buyers, or category leaders, spend more time in the office, fielding hundreds of cold calls a week from vendors tripping over themselves to make Trader Joe’s a customer. Trader Joe’s is a supplier’s dream account: It pays on time and doesn’t mess with extra charges for advertising, couponing, or slotting fees that traditional supermarkets charge suppliers to get their products onto the shelves. “It’s all transparent — no BS,” says a former executive. In exchange, suppliers have to agree to operate under Trader Joe’s cloak of secrecy. Fortune obtained a copy of a standard vendor agreement, which states, “Vendor shall not publicize its business relationship with TJ’s in any manner.”

Why the lockdown? Former executives say that Trader Joe’s wants neither its shoppers nor its competitors to know who’s making its products. And many suppliers aren’t that keen on consumers knowing that they produce a lower-cost version for Trader Joe’s either. Take Tasty Bite, which makes much of Trader Joe’s Indian food. The Tasty Bite Punjab Eggplant ran $3.39 at a Whole Foods in Manhattan. The seemingly identical Punjab Eggplant that the Stamford, Conn., company makes for Trader Joe’s is more than $1 cheaper.

Over the years Trader Joe’s has improved the way it distributes Joe’s-branded goodies to its stores. Management has sought to minimize the number of hands that touch a product; whenever possible, Trader Joe’s purchases directly from the manufacturers, which then ship their wares straight to Trader Joe’s distribution centers. A U.S.-made cheese, for example, is sent to distribution centers nationwide, where it’s sometimes cut and wrapped, taking another cost out of the equation. At a traditional supermarket, that same cheese would probably go through a distributor first, tacking on another cost. Trucks leave the distribution centers daily for the stores. Trader Joe’s small stores don’t have much of a back room, so ordering from the distribution centers has to be precise.

This distribution process helps determine where the company opens its stores. Texas and Florida have cities that boast consumers Trader Joe’s covets, but insiders say the current distribution infrastructure makes it difficult for the company to efficiently get products to those states. To pick their next locales, employees look at demographics such as education level. In the past they’ve even looked at who’s subscribing to high-end food and cooking magazines as a way of divining where the epicures are.

On a Tuesday evening just before dinnertime, retail expert Burt P. Flickinger III joins the steady hum of foot traffic at the Trader Joe’s in Larchmont, N.Y. Because Trader Joe’s won’t give Fortune any information on its stores, Flickinger, of consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, has agreed to walk through a few suburban locales and offer feedback. In Larchmont, Flickinger does a little bit of his own shopping. (It’s what happens when you walk into a Trader Joe’s — you get sucked into buying stuff you didn’t plan to.) An employee, noticing that he has his arms full, brings him a basket. At the register the perky cashier offers up that the mango sorbet Flickinger has selected is on her top 10 list of favorite Trader Joe’s items.

You can’t buy engagement from employees, but the pay at Trader Joe’s helps. Store managers, “captains” in Trader Joe’s parlance — the nautical titles are a holdover from Coulombe (newly promoted captains are commanders; assistant store managers are first mates) — can make in the low six figures, and full-time crew members can start in the $40,000 to $60,000 range. But on top of the pay, Trader Joe’s annually contributes 15.4% of employees’ gross income to tax-deferred retirement accounts.

All of that can lead to a better customer experience. A ringing bell instead of an intercom signals that more help is needed at the registers. Registers don’t have conveyor belts or scales, and perishables are sold by unit instead of weight, speeding up checkout. Crew members aren’t told the margins on products, so placement decisions are made based not on profits but on what’s best for the shopper. Every employee works all aspects of the store, and if you ask where the roasted chestnuts are he’ll walk you over instead of just saying “aisle five.” Want to know what they taste like? He can probably tell you, and he might even open the bag on the spot for you to try.

Can Trader Joe’s maintain that kind of charm as it expands? Former employees worry that the company is losing its entrepreneurial zeal and that CEO Dan Bane has made the place more corporate, adding more senior vice presidents, and creating new titles such as product developer. At headquarters Bane encourages employees to wear Hawaiian shirts and name tags. But putting systems in place isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “You have to grow up at some point,” says a former employee. “You have to start following rules. You have to start putting in checks and balances.” The stakes are higher now that Trader Joe’s has hundreds of stores. A buying error could cost the company millions.

Bane, 62, who has a background in accounting, graduated in 1969 from the University of Southern California, where he played baseball — or, as he’s said, “spent a lot of the time on the bench.” During a talk at USC, Bane said that he’s modeled his leadership style on his famed coach, Rod Dedeaux. Bane joined the company in 1998 as president of West Coast operations and became CEO only three years later.

A few former employees describe him as gruff, but he also has a softer side. In a video tribute to a sixth-grade teacher named Mrs. Bidwell, he talked about how she helped him adjust to life in El Dorado, Ark., after the Navy relocated Bane’s father there from Southern California.

Some former employees say Trader Joe’s has already lost its quirky cool. “In the early days we never tried to be the neighborhood store,” says a former employee. They didn’t have to: Trader Joe’s was the neighborhood store. And yet walk into the Chelsea location on a busy weekday night and you’ll see something you almost never see in Manhattan: strangers chatting with one another. Veteran customers tell newbies what products they absolutely have to try, and serious cooks share tips on how to spike sauces and semi-prepared foods to make them even tastier. If Trader Joe’s can maintain that kind of mojo, it could end up the biggest neighborhood store ever.

 

http://fortune.com/2010/08/23/inside-the-secret-world-of-trader-joes/

Author: Stucky

I'm right, you're wrong. Deal with it.

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Chicago999444
Chicago999444

Thanks for posting this, Stuck.

I love TJs, which, as many of you know, is owned by the same German company as my other fave grocery store, Aldi’s.

We’re hoping to get one in our neighborhood soon, even though Chicago has a number in the city, and one just over the border from me in Evanston. There’s one closer to downtown that’s easy to stop at on my way home on the train.

It’s a great place.

Dutchman
Dutchman

Trader Joe’s sucks. Tried it several years ago. Products come and go – WTF. Also (atleast here in Minneapolis) their parking lots are a cluster fuck.

SSS

“their parking lots are a cluster fuck.”
—-Dutchman

He’s right, Stucky. There are 4 TJ’s in Tucson, and at 3 of them, parking is a nightmare.

My wife loves the place. Me? Whatever.

bb

Stucky , food and sex.That’s all that’s on you mind.Shame , Shame , Shame.

yahsure
yahsure

I gave thenm two visits. TJ comes off as a pricey place to get wine and snacks for a get together.
The parking lot had a lot of German cars. I’m just not in that social class where people like to try and impress others.
If you like TJ, good for you.

Peaceout
Peaceout

I agree on two counts Trader Joes is the bomb as far as food goes but their parking lots are bullshit, everyone of them. They all require competitive parking practices with lots plugged with people idling by the front doors waiting to follow and stalk customers leaving the store so they can camp and wait for them to back out. I would shop there more frequently if the their parking situation was better. It also hurts the neighboring businesses because there are no spots for their customers to park. It’s a cluster for sure.

Dutchman
Dutchman

@Stuck: “I would estimate that 90% of the time we have to park next door at the bank”

So it’s a $8 billion dollar company and they ‘sponge’ off of other businesses parking. Bunch of cheap fucks! Although, since it’s a bank, who would care?

The one in St Louis Park, MN the fucking lot is so small and so convoluted can’t park anything in there but a compact. Forget my XC-90.

Dutchman
Dutchman

@Stucky: Key Chain Guy… SEO = search engine optimization

Aquapura
Aquapura

Somewhere I read on the interwebs an article from a farmer that raised natural meat of some sort. TJ’s comes a calling wanting to sell his product…but first they wanted to inject it with chemicals so it would stay “stable” for up to 30 days. Those asshats are not any better than the “commercial” grocery store down the street. Fuck-em. I much prefer the quality of most food I get at Costco to Trader Ho’s anyway. If I’m going to deal with a retail shit show I want to get bulk quantity of food along with motor oil, a new big screen tv and buy booze by the gallon jug!

I will say that there is a local high end grocer close to me that has FANTASTIC food quality. Prices are high to match but it’s a simple luxury. And I’ll always support a company that is local vs. Cali-fornia via Deutschland.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

The reason TJ’s parking sucks is the store is pop-u-lar, something we’re not used to in an Americana of empty malls. Stucky you’re right about the come/go of their products; we used to buy this dip called “Pinjur” that was super-tasty and low carb, but their supplier had a problem with shards of glass somehow getting into the product and TJ pulled it never to return.

Administrator

It seems odd that every Trader Joe’s doesn’t have enough parking.

They are either too cheap or don’t have a very professional real estate division.

At IKEA we figured out what the sales level of a location would be, based on demographics, spending, and total population within the trading area of the store. We then had a model that showed how many parking spaces would be needed at the peak sales period on Saturday afternoon.

That would tell our real estate guys how big of a property we needed to buy for a store. Maybe Trader Joes leases all their locations and takes what they can get.

Bostonbob

Admin,
Around here they tend to rent in second tier slightly older retail clusters AKA cheap rent. They do have a newer store at Patriots place that has an enormous amount of parking. The workers there have told me it is their busiest store in the state. Alcohol sales are limited to just three stores in the state by law this is one of them, you can’t beat 3 buck Chuck for cheap cooking wine. Used to be dad’s favorite store great selection of cheese and the staff always is friendly. Something to be said about taking care of your employees.
Bob.

Dianne C
Dianne C

Ha! In Missouri its Two Buck Chuck

Wrenx
Wrenx

Our local TJ’s has plenty of parking, but it’s not the norm. In the SF Bay Area, the parking is always terrible, so you learn to factor it in. Interesting article!

ASIG
ASIG

Tj’s yea I’ve been there a half doz times or so, there’s a huge parking lot there so that’s not much of a problem but the place is always crowded.

Jim
Jim

Let me say I like Trader Joe’s. However, it is responsible for that Two buck Chuck crapola wine that is unlike any other wine experience I have ever had-literally a rusty metallic aftertaste that lingered for hours. I must say it ranks right up there with malt liquor and other rock gut type alcohol. Really unbecoming of a store like this. The funny part about it is how I hear people rave about it. The Store does sell better wines of course but the chuck is a total mystery to me.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Sticky

There is not enough room to list all of my favorite TJ products without taking way to much space in the thread. I am three minutes from TJ so I am there ALOT. Parking is not a problem.

Trader Joe’s Brandy Beans are the shizzzz. Only available for about three weeks a year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I look forward to the seasonal items with great anticipation.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Damn sorry again about this POS tablet changing your name to Sticky.

Golden Oxen
Golden Oxen

I am a weekly shopper at Trader Joe’s, Just love it. Superb coffee selections.

Two bitches mentioned already. Dutchman is correct

Parking lots are the horrors, small, shared with other stores, a real pain in the ass.

Second is Stucky’s gripe, you fall in love with a product and they stop it or change it to something else.

When I really love something now I stock up if it has a long shelf life in case they change it.

One in particular I loved was a thick past sauce with prosciutto in it. The wife and I adored it.

Went to get some one day and not there with the sauces, asked a store clerk and he looked it up in a listing and said it was discontinued. Still bull shit over it. Wish I had bought a case and stored them somewhere in the garage.

Jim
Jim

Stucky : Two buck chuck is on the par with mad dog 20 20. And the yuppie wannabes gushing over it like it is some fine French wine is just a visual symbol of the decline of America. All sizzle and no steak. I will take you up on the cooking aspect of it– but in fact I will not, I will just take your word for it.

Billy
Billy

Never shopped at Trader Joe’s. Don’t even know where the closest one is… though probably given our location and the “provincial” tastes of us simple rubes, it’s probably too far to justify a trip.

There’s an Aldi in Lexington. When we go to town, we hit Aldi, since they carry lots of German/Euro stuff that my wife likes. She often buys them out of certain things – like Prinzen Rolle cookies – she loves those things. I’ve seen her buy cases of them at a time – all they had on the shelf. Stack them in the stash and eat on them over the coming months…

comment image

Ahh… just looked up Trader Joe’s in Kentucky. Nearest one is Lexington. But, unlike the Aldi location, Trader Joe’s is located inside the inner loop, right on Nicholasville Road, not far from UK… that means infuriating, stupid traffic. Meaning if you’re heading that way, best get there before the crack of dawn, otherwise the dumbshit drivers and mass of traffic will probably make you blow your porch light…

It seems like everyone in the city wants to go through that particular stretch of road… there’s one section of road that is so monumentally fucked up, I have fantasized about meeting the city planner or engineer who designed it and taking his head as a trophy… make a nice cup.

Might stop in the next time I’m over in town… which, as I write this, could be a couple months from now, being as it’s an hour drive one way…

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

@Billy

The closest to you is in Louisville. We would be glad to give you pointers on what is super primo good at TJ’s. Aldi’s is OK but TJ rocks

Billy
Billy

@ Bea,

No, Lexington is closer. Only an hour. Louisville is 90 minutes.

If you drew a big capital “Y” Louisville would be on the left, Lexington on the right, and we would be near the bottom…

There is a prepper store just south of Lexington that I like going to. They got LOADS of good and useful shit…

http://www.lexingtoncontainercompany.com/index.html

It’s just off Nicholasville Road, but if I go there (and I have to) then I can jink north and hit TJ’s… not sure what they would have that would interest us, but I suppose we’ll see…

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Billy – OK, I pictured you a little south of Elizabethtown, I’m 2 hours from the Ville part of the week. Just try the French Tarte Lorraine in the frozen food ($4.49).

Stucky – A big seller for TJ’s is the (sea salt and dark chocolate almonds) and the (fleur de sel sea salt caramels) both in the candy section. Many newspaper articles have been written about folks being addicted to those yummy morsels.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

It’s OK. The only thing I buy there is frozen fish. You can get things like marinated mahi-mahi, walnut-encrusted tilapia, etc. I don’t usually buy pre-prepared food, though. They have a lot of stuff like potstickers or edamame that will clog up your freezer for a year. Edamame is not a meal. It’s not even a snack. It’s what you eat while you’re waiting for the server to bring your sushi. Trader Joe’s is a little too upscale for my tastes. Audi-driving empty-nester condo-dwelling would-be hipsters. In the words of Drunk Uncle, “That’s not me”.

Little King
Little King

This is where we shop mostly. I worked in a big chain grocery store for 20 years and I really like the small size of the store and so many of their items. Their frozen Chinese dishes are as good as a restaurant, maybe better. where can you get a bottle of wine for $3.29? it’s as good as the $12 version we buy at the liquor store. Try their frozen Bolognese spaghetti sauce if you like spaghetti. When I go to the store sometimes I am buying a few things for 4 other family members or friends because we have to travel 50 miles to the store. I guess it’s like liver, you either love it or hate it.

Let me be clear
Let me be clear

Is this TBP? If you cork-sniffing gourmands will forgive my provincial innocence, I shop at Sam’s Club at the suggestion of Herr BB. I shopped at Costco in the 80’s and I could not get out of the store for less than $200 back when $200 was serious money. I went to Sam’s and I was delighted to see my bill came to $97. Sam’s doesn’t have caviar in season or out of season. We buy laundry detergent, toilet paper, Yuban, bottled water, tortillas, bread, cow tongue, ox tail, NY steak, oranges, bananas, persimmons if they are available, blue jeans on occassion, packaged ham, eggs and milk (one gallon).
The church lady wanted to go to Costco last week, years later the place is still a clusterfuck. They intentionally make you wander in the canyons of flatscreens, jewelry, household appliances, mattresses, furniture, clothing one grade up from Sears, liquors, bread, cookies, the meat department, fresh fruit, the walk-in milk freezer (two gallons minimum), fancy juices, toilet paper, paper towels, drinking water, sodas, cleaning supplies, coffee, frozen food, process juices, olives, pickles, ketchup, beans, rice, cup o noodles, vitamins, toothpaste, bathsoap, chocolate, candy, prescriptions…
Schools of people with shimmering carts filled to the gills navigate the narrow channels throughout Costco, they are agressive and visibly upset if you go the wrong way, block them or stop unexpectedly. You can’t examine something without ten people approaching like simians eager to imitate your slightest move, reach for a bottle of Jose Cuervo and ten hands each grab a bottle. Tall fucks, short fucks, family fucks, fat fucks and dumb fucks crowd around a free food cart blocking the narrow throughfare.
Sam’s has wide aisles marvelously free of crowds. It is a pleasure to skip over to the meat section in under a minute, 15 minutes less time than it takes to do the same thing at Costco. Rarely do you see a person standing in front of a food sample cart. The vendors stand by with hopeful looks on their faces. One by the liquors forces a smile at the 10,000th joker who asks if he is giving free samples of beer.
Given that I am by nature a loner, I don’t care to listen to a Trader Joe’s shopper expound on the joys of jelly jujube beans or the health benefits of garbanzo and garlic jam. I don’t care to be a demographic, just let me shop for what I want and keep the precious, quaint and cute crap down to a minimum. I would be embarrassed to have to explain an environmentally responsible or green, eco-friendly product to a gushing guest – OMG, you’re saving the planet! If i want to save the planet, I’ll join Greenpeace.

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