Tag Archives: trader joe’s

Why No Trader Joe’s in GSO?

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The Triad Business Journal explores why there won't be a Trader Joe's in Greensboro in the near future. In addition to all of the reasons cited in the article – Greensboro not being on TJ's 2-year plan, the attorney involved in the proposed project last year no longer being involved, and nothing happening on the development front – they might want to add that no one in Greensboro (that I know of) made a video to try and woo Trader Joe's. Some folks in Winston-Salem did a couple of years ago and now we have a TJ's in Thruway. So, folks in GSO here's a helpful hint from your neighbors in Camel City.

SueMo Was Right About Trader Joe’s Coming to Winston-Salem

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One of the problems that newspapers have is that if they want to retain even a semblance of their status as a real news operation they can't just print any old rumor that comes across their desks. That's why it wouldn't be fair to the Winston-Salem Journal to say that they were scooped by a margin of about two months when SueMo, probably the most connected person in Winston-Salem, wrote on Facebook that she'd heard a rumor that Trader Joe's was coming to Winston-Salem.

If you're a Trader Joe's fan then today brought you some welcome news, as reported on the Winston-Salem Journal Facebook page. When they get around to putting a story on their website I'll try to remember to link to it.

Trader Joe’s Big Brother

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I remember reading an article (I think in Wired magazine) years ago about the parent company for Trader Joe's, but I'd forgotten about it until I saw this Freakonomics post:

The company is called Aldi and, though I’d seen one or two of its stores in the past, I didn’t even know it was a grocery store. Then I read this very interesting Wall Street Journal piece about the company’s ambitious new plan for the U.S., which calls for 75 new stores this year. The article claims that Aldi is so good at selling cheap goods that WalMart couldn’t compete with it in Germany.

So, for those of you waiting with bated breath for Trader Joe's to announce a store opening in Winston-Salem or Greensboro, you can already shop at its big brother's stores.  Here's a handy-dandy list of locations for you.

Rumor Mill – Trader Joes to Winston-Salem?!

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SueMo has shared something on Facebook that I pray is not wishful thinking or a cruel joke: Trader Joe's coming to Winston-Salem in early 2013.  Could it be?

Seriously this is a definition of a rumor – SueMo shared the status of a friend on Facebook who'd received a text from her friend that works at Trader Joe's and who'd told her that Winston-Salem was on the company's "store bulletin."  So don't get too excited yet, but maybe we'll get confirmation from something more official – like Twitter.

BTW, I was just checking out the website and it appears that there's a Trader Joe's on the same road as our oldest son's apartment in Charlotte.  I feel like a total idiot now that I know we've been within a stone's throw of the place and didn't even know it.  Guess we've got another reason to visit him!

Yo, Winston-Salem Folks Interested in Trader Joe’s

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All you folks who got together to create the video aimed at convincing Trader Joe's to open a store in Winston-Salem will probably find this Fortune article interesting.  I for one didn't know that the same German family that owns Trader Joe's also owns Aldi.  From the article:

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 (PEP, Fortune 500) Frito-Lay. 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.

I love this quote about the "typical" Trader Joe's shopper:

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."

Can we say Ardmore and West End?