14 ms·

Trader Joe Wrote a Memoir

85 points by samclemens 5y ago

maxk42 5y ago
Am I missing something? This reads like the introduction to an article. Is there more somewhere?
- wffurr 5y ago
  It’s a book review. I thought it fairly thoroughly covered the reasons why you might want to read the book. If you’re looking for the rest of Trader Joe’s story, then that’s what’s in the rest of the book.
AlbertCory 5y ago
For maxk42: I think it should end with : “A deeply troubled company is always the fault of the CEO, the board of directors, and the controlling stockholders who appoint these worthies,” he writes. “It is never the fault of the frontline troops.” How true that is. I've noticed that the lower-level employees of a terrible company can always get an interview: no one blames them for it. Unless they stayed there long enough to become a lifer. Moral: if you're at a garbage company, get out while you can. Trader Joe's stores are always full, even at times when "regular" supermarkets are mostly empty. Moreover, you almost never have to wait a long time to check out. It's really a miracle how good they are.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Clearly they do a lot of things right from a people perspective. [I'm sure there are exceptions.] They also seem to have picked a set of constraints that work well for them and their customers in (relatively upscale?) urban locations. Also a very deliberate rollout strategy. I remember when they were I think only in California. There was a time when I was going out to Orange County a lot and our engineering manager one day doing some vaguely crazy driving to get to a Trader Joe's before heading back east on a plane.
- irateswami 5y ago
  Whew boy do I have some stories that might shatter your view of trader joe's being a good company. Prime example: my store captain, Jeff, got busted having an affair with a crew member that he was a direct supervisor of. Granted, Jeff was an asshole from the day I met him, he did everything he could to hold up my (and many others) promotions and pay raises just because he could, but the thing that got him finally fired was dipping his pen in the company ink. I was personally denied safety equipment multiple times, like lift belts and new blades for my box cutter. I know of a another store Captain that got fired for kicking out customers that weren't wearing masks when they tried to come in. TJ's is extremely anti-union and anti-union propaganda is posted all over the employee areas and handbook. Trader Joe's corporate will turn a blind eye to ANYTHING, as long as a customer doesn't complain or it doesn't open up the company to some kind of liability. It was a super cool company up until about 20 years ago when Bane took over as CEO. Since then it has been a cavalcade of hiring shitty management and unsustainable growth. TJ's has lost it's original weltanschauung and Joe Coloumbe would be horrified to see how the company is run now.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    You had me up until "TJ's is extremely anti-union."
    - RLN 5y ago
      Is it not? Or do you just not feel that's a negative?
  - WillPostForFood 5y ago
    I’m sorry you had a bad experience! For me, TJs was by far the best place to shop during the pandemic. Strict capacity limits, a clearly marked, spaced queue outside the store, and they’d wipe down the carts right in front of you so you knew it was clean. Masks were ubiquitous on customers and employees. It was relief to shop there compared to other stores.
    - gcr 5y ago
      "Had a bad experience" ...? The comment you're replying to was an employee, not a customer! It sounds like the main point is that TJ exploits its employees and is willing to turn a blind eye to their wellbeing in order to make a good experience for customers, which isn't a healthy strategy.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  >Trader Joe's stores are always full, even at times when "regular" supermarkets are mostly empty. I have been to many food stores over the past year, not once encountered stores being empty. The stuff I want is always there.
  - EsotericAlgo 5y ago
    I interpreted the comment to be about the number of customers in a store as opposed to stock levels. Anecdotally, Traders Joes does seem to have a higher base level of customers at any given time. However, I readily acknowledge that perception may be to their relatively smaller footprints and reduced operating hours.
    - AlbertCory 5y ago
      Right, I should have clarified it's "# customers." They're not open at 2:00 am, that's for sure.
- warning26 5y ago
  > Trader Joe's stores are always full, even at times when "regular" supermarkets are mostly empty. They actually employ a neat UX trick to make it appear this way! When a product is sold out, they'll remove the sign for it and rearrange the existing products to fill the space, making it seem like there's nothing missing. I realized this when I visited once and the entire spice shelf consisted of one spice (onion salt), spread across like 5 shelves.
  - djmips 5y ago
    I thought many stores did that. I've noticed that in plenty of other establishments.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    This must be location dependent because my TJ’s always runs out of cauliflower gnocchi and meatless meatballs and they never bother to fill in the space. Another nice thing about TJ’s is if they’re out of something you can have a manager reserve it for you and call you when it’s ready.
    - Nyra 5y ago
      The frozen items are restocked daily in the afternoons so it would be a waste of time to reorganize unless they know there’s a shortage for a specific item. Usually they do if that’s the case.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Many stores give the manager leeway in ordering (even Walmart) - so if theres something you want you can often get them to order extra for you. Can be fun to get a load of soemthing still in the shipping crates.
  - zemvpferreira 5y ago
    Not that you don't make a fine point but I believe the original comment was referring to stores being full or empty of customers. Still, learned something new!
  - 5y ago
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  > Moreover, you almost never have to wait a long time to check out. Haha, I take it you haven't been to the ones in Manhattan? I would go to Trader Joe's much more often if not for the mandatory 15+ minutes of waiting in line.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    No, I sure haven't. But come on now: Manhattan! What do you expect?
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Well, other supermarkets here have much shorter lines. I explicitly avoid Trader Joes because the lines tend to be longer than anywhere else.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > Trader Joe's stores are always full, > Moreover, you almost never have to wait a long time to check out. Uh, maybe in your store, at the time of day you go shopping? Our store has probably ten checkout lines and all the time if I go at the wrong time of day, I'm standing in line for several minutes. Even when they were limiting #'s in the stores for pandemic reasons checkout lines were stretching into the aisles. Other times I stroll in and it's a ghost town, same time of day, same day of the week I usually go.
advael 5y ago
I've never been that interested in accounts of the lives of entrepreneurs. It strikes me as a genre akin to the autobiographies (or commissioned biographies) of autocrats. This review makes me want to read this book though
- paulpauper 5y ago
  As a genre they sell poorly, really poorly. worse than even no-name amazon authors of fan fiction and erotica. As it turns out, CEOs are not that interesting , nor are their lives. Their accomplishments may be impressive but this doesn't always make for interesting reading.
  - bloodyplonker22 5y ago
    Way to generalize. Maybe it's true if you're Meg Whitman, but it's obviously not true for people like Steve Jobs.
  - sharkweek 5y ago
    Is that true? I guess there’s always exceptions but Shoe Dog is an all-time best seller and is basically just the CEO recounting his version of events for 300 or so pages. Still enjoyed it though! Onward by Schultz (zzz), Jobs by Isaacson (not bad), the various Bezos and Ma books, etc. all seem to top lists.
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      it is easy to top a best-seller list with a pre-order push, which is what famous ppl typically do. Staying power however much harder to achieve. Autobiographies are probably going to be worse than having a world-famous, top-talented writer tell the story.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      Jobs by Isaacson. Any book by Isaacson or some other famous author will always be exceptions. Autobiographies are also different than either biographies or something in the middle. I’d think the former sell worse. Bezos, Jack Ma, Jobs, Schultz are known as the person not just the company they [co]-founded, but for their industry as a whole while also being revered. Schultz might be an exception there. Not sure since his takes of getting into politics as an out of touch billionaire is the thing that comes to mind now.
setpatchaddress 5y ago
I’d love to also read about the post-“Joe” 1979-present period — how Aldi’s has done so well with it without compromising the original principles.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Aldi's is probably good example of optimizing for a different set of constraints. I use Trader Joe's a lot when I can; there isn't one especially near me. But there's an Aldi's right down the road--which I popped my head in once but have never bought at.
  - fencepost 5y ago
    IIRC fully separate companies tied into "Aldi Nord" and "Aldi Sud" from when the original company was split between sons. Similar approaches of "all store brand products" but Aldi focuses more on price and value while TJs focuses on "romance the hell out of it." Edit: https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-trader-joes-related/ https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-trader-joes-related/
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I knew they were related. Yeah. TJs optimizes for things that are of far more interest to me than what Aldi does. (Not that TJs is anything like a one stop shop for me.)
      - AlbertCory 5y ago
        It's close to one-stop, but not quite there. Paper products are very sparse, as are soaps & cleaning products, and personal/health stuff (I really don't care for Tom's of Maine).
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        Aldi is shifting a bit. If you haven’t been in one for a few years you should visit again.
      - 5y ago
MarcoZavala 5y ago
sjg007 5y ago
What are some good business leader books to read? I realize memoirs are 20:20 hindsight but are there any discussing uncertainty?
wirelesspotat 5y ago
Link without the paywall: https://archive.md/EYdZy https://archive.md/EYdZy
screature2 5y ago
In a similar vein, but more broad (and less optimistic) I thought The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr was pretty good.
pronlover723 5y ago
I know I'm in the minority but I mostly don't get Trader Joe's. The food is mostly mediocre at best. I guess you're saved from the "tyranny of choice" by only having one of each item but if you don't like "Joe's spaghetti sauce" there's no other option vs a normal supermarket that will have several brands, one of which might match your tastes more than another. Maybe that old saying that Americans see food as fuel, vs French that see food as pleasure, means that most Americans don't care about taste so whatever they get from TJ's is fine? Further, the fact that, other than wine, the entire store is only "Trader Joe's" brand seems like it's working to put 1000s of small businesses out of business (the 1000s of brands that stock normal markets).
- gs17 5y ago
  > but if you don't like "Joe's spaghetti sauce" there's no other option vs a normal supermarket that will have several brands, one of which might match your tastes more than another Worse, I really liked one of the "Joe's spaghetti sauce"s, and recently it disappeared without warning, which is really common for items at Trader Joe's. You have to treat anything that isn't exactly something you could buy elsewhere as a limited time offer.
- taurath 5y ago
  The cheese and prepared food sections (salads, wraps, cooked chicken etc) are both extremely cheap compared to regular grocery stores, and of decent quality. A slice of brie is almost double the price in safeway from TJs. OTOH meat is more expensive (but higher quality). However I don’t know of anyone that only uses Trader Joe’s for groceries, for the same reasons you outlined. The bigger problem is just how sort of homogenized the US grocery system is, and with such vast distances to cover and the expectation to have basically the exact same things on the shelf quality takes a huge dive, and often the prices are not great. Even in areas like California or Washington with very large agricultural footprints “local” means almost nothing in a chain grocery store.
- zimzam 5y ago
  Trader Joe’s has the same prices nationally, so in NYC they are very cheap. For example, their jarred tomato sauce, which is pretty good quality, is $1.99 - the grocery store closest to me has bad tomato sauce starting at $4.99, the pretty good ones are more like $6.99 to $8.99. While not everything is this good of a deal, this is what makes it worth dealing with their crazy lines and limited selection!

85 points by samclemens 5y ago

maxk42 5y ago

Am I missing something? This reads like the introduction to an article. Is there more somewhere?

wffurr 5y ago
It’s a book review. I thought it fairly thoroughly covered the reasons why you might want to read the book. If you’re looking for the rest of Trader Joe’s story, then that’s what’s in the rest of the book.

AlbertCory 5y ago

For maxk42: I think it should end with : “A deeply troubled company is always the fault of the CEO, the board of directors, and the controlling stockholders who appoint these worthies,” he writes. “It is never the fault of the frontline troops.” How true that is. I've noticed that the lower-level employees of a terrible company can always get an interview: no one blames them for it. Unless they stayed there long enough to become a lifer. Moral: if you're at a garbage company, get out while you can. Trader Joe's stores are always full, even at times when "regular" supermarkets are mostly empty. Moreover, you almost never have to wait a long time to check out. It's really a miracle how good they are.

ghaff 5y ago
Clearly they do a lot of things right from a people perspective. [I'm sure there are exceptions.] They also seem to have picked a set of constraints that work well for them and their customers in (relatively upscale?) urban locations. Also a very deliberate rollout strategy. I remember when they were I think only in California. There was a time when I was going out to Orange County a lot and our engineering manager one day doing some vaguely crazy driving to get to a Trader Joe's before heading back east on a plane.
irateswami 5y ago
Whew boy do I have some stories that might shatter your view of trader joe's being a good company. Prime example: my store captain, Jeff, got busted having an affair with a crew member that he was a direct supervisor of. Granted, Jeff was an asshole from the day I met him, he did everything he could to hold up my (and many others) promotions and pay raises just because he could, but the thing that got him finally fired was dipping his pen in the company ink. I was personally denied safety equipment multiple times, like lift belts and new blades for my box cutter. I know of a another store Captain that got fired for kicking out customers that weren't wearing masks when they tried to come in. TJ's is extremely anti-union and anti-union propaganda is posted all over the employee areas and handbook. Trader Joe's corporate will turn a blind eye to ANYTHING, as long as a customer doesn't complain or it doesn't open up the company to some kind of liability. It was a super cool company up until about 20 years ago when Bane took over as CEO. Since then it has been a cavalcade of hiring shitty management and unsustainable growth. TJ's has lost it's original weltanschauung and Joe Coloumbe would be horrified to see how the company is run now.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  You had me up until "TJ's is extremely anti-union."
  - RLN 5y ago
    Is it not? Or do you just not feel that's a negative?
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  I’m sorry you had a bad experience! For me, TJs was by far the best place to shop during the pandemic. Strict capacity limits, a clearly marked, spaced queue outside the store, and they’d wipe down the carts right in front of you so you knew it was clean. Masks were ubiquitous on customers and employees. It was relief to shop there compared to other stores.
  - gcr 5y ago
    "Had a bad experience" ...? The comment you're replying to was an employee, not a customer! It sounds like the main point is that TJ exploits its employees and is willing to turn a blind eye to their wellbeing in order to make a good experience for customers, which isn't a healthy strategy.
paulpauper 5y ago
>Trader Joe's stores are always full, even at times when "regular" supermarkets are mostly empty. I have been to many food stores over the past year, not once encountered stores being empty. The stuff I want is always there.
- EsotericAlgo 5y ago
  I interpreted the comment to be about the number of customers in a store as opposed to stock levels. Anecdotally, Traders Joes does seem to have a higher base level of customers at any given time. However, I readily acknowledge that perception may be to their relatively smaller footprints and reduced operating hours.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    Right, I should have clarified it's "# customers." They're not open at 2:00 am, that's for sure.
warning26 5y ago
> Trader Joe's stores are always full, even at times when "regular" supermarkets are mostly empty. They actually employ a neat UX trick to make it appear this way! When a product is sold out, they'll remove the sign for it and rearrange the existing products to fill the space, making it seem like there's nothing missing. I realized this when I visited once and the entire spice shelf consisted of one spice (onion salt), spread across like 5 shelves.
- djmips 5y ago
  I thought many stores did that. I've noticed that in plenty of other establishments.
- Spivak 5y ago
  This must be location dependent because my TJ’s always runs out of cauliflower gnocchi and meatless meatballs and they never bother to fill in the space. Another nice thing about TJ’s is if they’re out of something you can have a manager reserve it for you and call you when it’s ready.
  - Nyra 5y ago
    The frozen items are restocked daily in the afternoons so it would be a waste of time to reorganize unless they know there’s a shortage for a specific item. Usually they do if that’s the case.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Many stores give the manager leeway in ordering (even Walmart) - so if theres something you want you can often get them to order extra for you. Can be fun to get a load of soemthing still in the shipping crates.
- zemvpferreira 5y ago
  Not that you don't make a fine point but I believe the original comment was referring to stores being full or empty of customers. Still, learned something new!
- 5y ago
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
> Moreover, you almost never have to wait a long time to check out. Haha, I take it you haven't been to the ones in Manhattan? I would go to Trader Joe's much more often if not for the mandatory 15+ minutes of waiting in line.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  No, I sure haven't. But come on now: Manhattan! What do you expect?
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Well, other supermarkets here have much shorter lines. I explicitly avoid Trader Joes because the lines tend to be longer than anywhere else.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
> Trader Joe's stores are always full, > Moreover, you almost never have to wait a long time to check out. Uh, maybe in your store, at the time of day you go shopping? Our store has probably ten checkout lines and all the time if I go at the wrong time of day, I'm standing in line for several minutes. Even when they were limiting #'s in the stores for pandemic reasons checkout lines were stretching into the aisles. Other times I stroll in and it's a ghost town, same time of day, same day of the week I usually go.

advael 5y ago

I've never been that interested in accounts of the lives of entrepreneurs. It strikes me as a genre akin to the autobiographies (or commissioned biographies) of autocrats. This review makes me want to read this book though

paulpauper 5y ago
As a genre they sell poorly, really poorly. worse than even no-name amazon authors of fan fiction and erotica. As it turns out, CEOs are not that interesting , nor are their lives. Their accomplishments may be impressive but this doesn't always make for interesting reading.
- bloodyplonker22 5y ago
  Way to generalize. Maybe it's true if you're Meg Whitman, but it's obviously not true for people like Steve Jobs.
- sharkweek 5y ago
  Is that true? I guess there’s always exceptions but Shoe Dog is an all-time best seller and is basically just the CEO recounting his version of events for 300 or so pages. Still enjoyed it though! Onward by Schultz (zzz), Jobs by Isaacson (not bad), the various Bezos and Ma books, etc. all seem to top lists.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    it is easy to top a best-seller list with a pre-order push, which is what famous ppl typically do. Staying power however much harder to achieve. Autobiographies are probably going to be worse than having a world-famous, top-talented writer tell the story.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Jobs by Isaacson. Any book by Isaacson or some other famous author will always be exceptions. Autobiographies are also different than either biographies or something in the middle. I’d think the former sell worse. Bezos, Jack Ma, Jobs, Schultz are known as the person not just the company they [co]-founded, but for their industry as a whole while also being revered. Schultz might be an exception there. Not sure since his takes of getting into politics as an out of touch billionaire is the thing that comes to mind now.

setpatchaddress 5y ago

I’d love to also read about the post-“Joe” 1979-present period — how Aldi’s has done so well with it without compromising the original principles.

ghaff 5y ago
Aldi's is probably good example of optimizing for a different set of constraints. I use Trader Joe's a lot when I can; there isn't one especially near me. But there's an Aldi's right down the road--which I popped my head in once but have never bought at.
- fencepost 5y ago
  IIRC fully separate companies tied into "Aldi Nord" and "Aldi Sud" from when the original company was split between sons. Similar approaches of "all store brand products" but Aldi focuses more on price and value while TJs focuses on "romance the hell out of it." Edit: https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-trader-joes-related/ https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-trader-joes-related/
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I knew they were related. Yeah. TJs optimizes for things that are of far more interest to me than what Aldi does. (Not that TJs is anything like a one stop shop for me.)
    - AlbertCory 5y ago
      It's close to one-stop, but not quite there. Paper products are very sparse, as are soaps & cleaning products, and personal/health stuff (I really don't care for Tom's of Maine).
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Aldi is shifting a bit. If you haven’t been in one for a few years you should visit again.
    - 5y ago

MarcoZavala 5y ago

sjg007 5y ago

What are some good business leader books to read? I realize memoirs are 20:20 hindsight but are there any discussing uncertainty?

wirelesspotat 5y ago

Link without the paywall: https://archive.md/EYdZy https://archive.md/EYdZy

screature2 5y ago

In a similar vein, but more broad (and less optimistic) I thought The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr was pretty good.

pronlover723 5y ago

I know I'm in the minority but I mostly don't get Trader Joe's. The food is mostly mediocre at best. I guess you're saved from the "tyranny of choice" by only having one of each item but if you don't like "Joe's spaghetti sauce" there's no other option vs a normal supermarket that will have several brands, one of which might match your tastes more than another. Maybe that old saying that Americans see food as fuel, vs French that see food as pleasure, means that most Americans don't care about taste so whatever they get from TJ's is fine? Further, the fact that, other than wine, the entire store is only "Trader Joe's" brand seems like it's working to put 1000s of small businesses out of business (the 1000s of brands that stock normal markets).

gs17 5y ago
> but if you don't like "Joe's spaghetti sauce" there's no other option vs a normal supermarket that will have several brands, one of which might match your tastes more than another Worse, I really liked one of the "Joe's spaghetti sauce"s, and recently it disappeared without warning, which is really common for items at Trader Joe's. You have to treat anything that isn't exactly something you could buy elsewhere as a limited time offer.
taurath 5y ago
The cheese and prepared food sections (salads, wraps, cooked chicken etc) are both extremely cheap compared to regular grocery stores, and of decent quality. A slice of brie is almost double the price in safeway from TJs. OTOH meat is more expensive (but higher quality). However I don’t know of anyone that only uses Trader Joe’s for groceries, for the same reasons you outlined. The bigger problem is just how sort of homogenized the US grocery system is, and with such vast distances to cover and the expectation to have basically the exact same things on the shelf quality takes a huge dive, and often the prices are not great. Even in areas like California or Washington with very large agricultural footprints “local” means almost nothing in a chain grocery store.
zimzam 5y ago
Trader Joe’s has the same prices nationally, so in NYC they are very cheap. For example, their jarred tomato sauce, which is pretty good quality, is $1.99 - the grocery store closest to me has bad tomato sauce starting at $4.99, the pretty good ones are more like $6.99 to $8.99. While not everything is this good of a deal, this is what makes it worth dealing with their crazy lines and limited selection!