Fox Business
Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.
So he found a new way to bring everything from a then-exotic snack food called granola to the California-produced wines that for flavor compared with anything from France. And he made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky little grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.” More
Trader Joe’s is pretty good, but if you want absolute selection and variety. go to Jungle Jim’s SE of Hamilton OH. Wear comfortable shoes and have a lot of money to spend.
Trader Joe’s, if you haven’t seen enough Birkenstock wearing, pious driving, grey haired man buns, just go to a Trader Joe’s. Everyone there with a self satisfied, smug look on their face. I wore a MAGA hat in the one close to me a few months ago you’d think I was carrying the Coronavirus.
I like Trader Joe’s too, the one closest to us is still over 30 miles away and the parking lot is half as big as it needs to be. Oh, and joe6pack is right, the liberal smugness is thick and obnoxious.
Where I live- Whole Foods wins the Smug trophy. But it’s mostly from the customers.
Trader Joe’s isn’t that bad. The employees are friendly and some of the customers have a little bit of air headedness about them and look lost. You can tell it is their nannies who do the shopping, not them. lol.
I understand the feeling but everyone goes there. I do 90% of my shopping there, filling in with Vons. It is an everyman’s store, much more so than Whole Foods.
TJ’s is one of my favorite stores, we have 2 of them in Spokane. They have a lot of things there I can’t get anywhere else and I have no problems with their quirkiness. However we have 2 other local natural markets which are Yuppie heaven and the only reason I go there is that they a buy a lot of flowers from us. The one on the S Hill next to the Manito Country Club called Rocket Market is an old converted Chevron gas station (they still sell gas and are the most expensive in town for gas) which was run back in the day by a very good friend of my dad, Rocket Mkt. is snob central and their prices are twice what everyone else charges including TJ’s. The other store Huckleberry’s was an old Safeway store that my mom shopped at back in the 50’s and 60’s since we lived nearby and she took me grocery shopping with her on occasion.
3 buck Chuck is really good.
I think Jpm is referring to the OLCC tax here in Oregon, 2 buck Chuck is 3 bucks here.
OLCC = Oregon Liquor Control Commission, our Soviet-style alcohol control government authority.
We like TJ’s for some things, but if we had a Sprouts here we would shop there instead.
JPM
My wife says it has gotten back down to 2 bucks a bottle.
I drink it occasionally but would never serve it to a guest. I’m not a wine snob but I do have some standards.
Whole Foods is full of liberals. I don’t like it.
I’ve been in the TJ in Colorado Springs, wasn’t impressed. It reminded me of a run down A&P. I like Sprouts, Whole Paycheck would be better if the liberal customers would go away
F-Y-I…
Since 1979, Trader Joe’s stores in the US have been owned by the German company Aldi Nord (North). The Aldi stores in the US are owned by Aldi Süd (South). Aldi and Trader Joe’s, nevertheless, are run independently.