6 ms·
Unless it's Trader Joes, in which case I leave noticeably happier than I was pre-grocery shopping.
by jordanmorgan10 4y ago
Unless it's Trader Joes, in which case I leave noticeably happier than I was pre-grocery shopping.
- tuckerpo 4y agoI'd attribute that to the selection of choices for any individual item being very low there. There aren't 48 brands of meatballs to choose from.
- mattl 4y agoThey also do not want self checkouts, coupons, apps, etc.
- reducesuffering 4y ago> coupons, apps Good? Apps are just extra margin places like Safeway tack on. Coupons are just taking things from fat margin to TJ-level margin.
- mattl 4y agoOh I love it. I try to buy almost everything at TJs.
- sbf501 4y agoOpposite here: I dislike Trader Joe's. I call it "bougie safeway". Trader Joe's is great if you like boxed, prepared food, but it isn't much better for anything else. Their produce is meh and overly wrapped with packaging.
- spicybright 4y agoAgreed. But to be fair, I've yet to see somewhere with a better cheese selection.
- sbf501 4y agoWell, I live in Berkeley, so I'm pretty damn spoiled when it comes to cheese shops. But I can see that being helpful if there are no cheese stores, import stores, or specialty foods stores in your town.
- bluedino 4y agoOur Kroger has a pretty nice cheese selection. Not quite Whole Foods but it's way, way cheaper
- lapetitejort 4y agoI concur. I can't find anything other than all purpose and wheat flour. No bread flour, or anything more obscure like rye, spelt, etc. Similarly, they sell a single sea salt, alongside tons of trendy mixed salts. Want iodized salt? Go find a big grocery store. I do find tons of snacks and TV dinners, which I enjoy. But if I'm stocking up on essentials, I'd rather go to a big store. And yes, I do find obscure flours at big stores, most recently 00 and rye.
- koala_man 4y agoSomeone said that his favorite part of shopping at Trader Joe's is afterwards when you go to a supermarket to buy all the stuff you need. Safeway has everything I'd want from Trader Joe's at this point, and I don't have to do two trips.
- justinlloyd 4y agoTJ's for us is "we need these specific store brand items" or "I need to restock my Blackthorn cider." And unfortunately TJ's has removed three store brand products in the past two years, so the number of reasons to go there is rapidly diminishing for our household.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoBut that's exactly why TJs is cheaper. You gain price and sacrifice variety.
- robonerd 4y agoIt's not just food either, trader joes is lacking many of the non-food goods that other grocery stores almost universally have. Need aluminum foil or parchment paper? You can't buy those at trader joes.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> trader joes is lacking many of the non-food goods that other grocery stores almost universally have. It's almost like their business model is “don’t devote lots of floor space to stuff you can get anywhere so price competition drives margins to zero”. .
- colpabar 4y agoI agree that there's way too much plastic on the produce, but some of the boxed prepared food is really, really great.
- reducesuffering 4y agoTJ's is significantly better value and less margin than Safeway. The opposite of "bougie."
- floren 4y agoI'm not convinced that the value is better. Most of the stuff at TJ's is reasonable quality, but the prices are often lower only because there's less product in the package. I'd have to sit down and compare unit prices before I could be assured you were getting a better value for your money.
- dragonwriter 4y agoTJ’s may be lower margin on what they carry than Safeway would be on comparable items; they achieve that by avoiding carrying lots of the low-margin items every other grocery store spends lots of money devoting floor space to. (But those are things people tend to also need a lot, so TJ’s ends up being an extra shopping trip, instead of a replacement.)
- tomjakubowski 4y agoTJ's processed/frozen stuff is often better, and always way cheaper, than either the name brands or supermarket generic brands. So I get those things at TJ's (sometimes along with stuff like milk and eggs), and buy grains, produce, meat and everything else from Ralphs.
- stevenwoo 4y agoThe local paper did comparison shopping and found Safeway to be about the same price for a weekly trip as Whole Foods. Trader Joes was significantly cheaper in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- lr4444lr 4y agoIt's hit or miss, but usually just because the stuff I don't like their is not my taste, not that it is poor quality. Some of their products I think are really great, both in quality and bargain. Plus, they work on a space efficiency model: products that don't sell popularly won't be kept in stock. Sometimes that's what I'm optimizing for when I want to try new products: what are other people voting for with their dollars?
- jordanmorgan10 4y agoI think a lot of it is because it's novel to me. I'm in the Midwest, and I just don't have any close to the greater Springfield, MO area. I'm told it's just beyond their supply chain. You have to get around St.Louis before they show up. We have HyVee though, and I quite enjoy it there.
- saperyton 4y agoI love Trader Joe's, but checkout there just takes too long. I want to grab products and leave, and not to spend 15-30 minutes on line.
- kube-system 4y agoY'all must go at peak times or something, I've never waited at the checkout at my TJs
- scruple 4y agoI grocery shop with my toddlers first thing in Saturday morning and our first stop is TJs. I only buy about a dozen different products at TJs but they're all staples in our weekly meals / snacks. Checkout is never a problem early in the morning.
- tengbretson 4y agoTheir food is whatever, but their long, slow checkout lines that obstruct other shoppers and generally customer-hostile layout often pushes me to the border of rage. The only thing that keeps me level are those dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
- thehappypm 4y agoI don’t understand, can you elaborate?
- jkubicek 4y agoThe dark chocolate peanut butter cups are really really (really) good
- ssully 4y agoIf you go there when it's busy, the checkout lines can get pretty large (they don't have dedicated baggers) and crowd parts of the store. With that said, I've noticed a similar trend at bigger stores by me lately as they added more self-checkout lines.
- dhosek 4y agoI've generally found that checkout times at TJs are much less than the local supers. Price- and quality-wise they totally win on cheese and pasta by a huge margin. Supermarket cheese is generally pretty awful (the only cheeses we get at the super are Mexican cheeses that TJs doesn't stock. I’ve occasionally bought, say cheddar at the super and it’s awful and costs more than TJs). The big thing for me for the last two years is that the clientele and staff at my local TJs have done a much better job of taking Covid seriously than the same at Whole Foods¹ or any standard super. ⸻ 1. I was in Whole Foods earlier today and was rather appalled to see a sign saying that customers are welcome [italics mine] to shop without a mask regardless of vaccination status. This while local Covid rates are on the rise. It seemed like they were encouraging people to go maskless.
- 4y ago
- 535188B17C93743 4y agoProbably an unpopular opinion––and I love TJs––but I feel like the quality and type of things you can buy there is akin to a Dollar General. The produce is often covered in plastic and subpar quality. The selection isn't great. Honestly, its greatest perk is the frozen food section and snacks.
- thepasswordis 4y agoTrader joes is basically just a larger version of the "grocery" aisle at a drug store wrapped up in some nice marketing. Hard pass.
- floren 4y agoTrader Joe's originated as a spin-off of the Rexall drugstore chain, so you're closer than you think.
- dhosek 4y agoI don't know where you get that from, but, um, no. Not remotely true.
- floren 4y agoFrom Wikipedia: > Also in 1958, Rexall employee Joe Coulombe was asked to test the launch of Pronto Markets, a store brand to compete against 7-Eleven. After running six Pronto Markets in the Los Angeles area, Rexall asked Coulombe to close them down. Coulombe decided to buy them out instead, and eventually renamed the chain "Trader Joe's". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexall#Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexall#Growth)
- astrange 4y agoI think of it as the place to get frozen Indian food and salad kits. Do drugstores have those?
- thepasswordis 4y agoYeah, usually (at least the ones near me). There's usually a freezer section with stuff like that in it.
- chrisan 4y agoI feel like Trader Joes is good for snacks you don't see else where but I can never _just_ go to trader joes and come home with some meals to make. I realize they sell microwave boxed meals, but yuck. Thankfully they are right next to whole foods so it's not much harm to stop in.
- astrange 4y agoThey have an interesting design principle where they only put stores in places where you feel like you're going to hit someone in the parking lot. I suppose it promotes biking to the store.