Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's is an American grocery store chain headquartered in Monrovia, California, with 631 locations across the United States as of January 15, 2026.
The first Trader Joe's store was opened in 1967 by founder Joe Coulombe in Pasadena, California. Theo Albrecht, the co-founder of Aldi, bought the chain in 1979. Today, its ownership is structured so Aldi Nord is a sister company, with both directly belonging to three foundations of the Albrecht family. The company has offices in Monrovia and Boston, Massachusetts.
History
Trader Joe's is named after its founder, Joe Coulombe. The company began in 1958 as a Greater Los Angeles area chain known as Pronto Market convenience stores, originally a subsidiary of Rexall unit Owl Drug. Coulombe believed that the original Pronto Markets were too similar to 7-Eleven, which he described as the "800-pound gorilla of convenience stores", and was concerned that the competition would be too heavy.Coulombe developed the idea of the Trader Joe's South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean. During the 1960s, the Tiki culture craze was still widespread in the United States, so in a direct nod to the fad, the Trader Joe's name itself was a spoof on Trader Vic's, the famous tiki-themed restaurant that had opened its first southern California location in the Beverly Hilton in 1955. Dining at Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills was notoriously expensive, but the Trader Joe's in Pasadena provided an irreverent and more affordable offering of food and drink. Coulombe noted two trends in the US that informed the merchandising of his new store concept: one, the number of college-educated people was rising steadily, partly due to the G.I. Bill, and two, with new jumbo jets due to premiere in 1970, international travel would be accelerating as well. A better-educated, more well-traveled public was acquiring tastes they had trouble satisfying in American supermarkets at the time.
The first store branded as "Trader Joe's" opened in 1967 in Pasadena, California; it remains in operation. In their first few decades, some of the stores offered fresh meats provided by butchers who leased space in the stores, along with sandwiches and freshly cut cheese, all in-store.
In 1979, owner and CEO of Aldi Nord Theo Albrecht bought the company. Joe Coulombe wanted the contract to be made on one page, but the German lawyers refused to write it, so Joe's attorney wrote it instead. The contract ended up being longer than one page, however.
Coulombe was succeeded as CEO by his Stanford roommate, John V. Shields, in 1987. Under his leadership, the company expanded into Arizona in 1993 and into the Pacific Northwest two years later. In 1996, the company opened its first stores on the East Coast in Brookline and Cambridge, both outside Boston. In 2001, Shields retired and Dan Bane succeeded him as CEO.
Since its inception, Trader Joe's has continued to expand across the United States. In 2004, BusinessWeek reported that Trader Joe's quintupled its number of stores between 1990 and 2001 and increased its profits tenfold. In February 2008, BusinessWeek reported that the company had the highest sales per square foot of any grocer in the United States. Two-and-a-half years later and in 2016, Fortune magazine estimated sales to be $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double the sales generated by Whole Foods.
Joe Coulombe, the namesake of the brand, died in 2020. Dan Bane retired as the CEO in July 2023 and was succeeded by Bryan Palbaum, previously the company's COO and president. At the same time, the company named Jon Basalone as vice-CEO and president, taking over from Palbaum in the latter role.
Locations
, Trader Joe's had 608 stores across 43 states as well as the District of Columbia in the United States with stores being added regularly. Most locations averaged between and. California has the largest number of stores, with 205 open in the state. The chain's busiest location is its 72nd & Broadway store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The smallest Trader Joe's location is in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, on Boylston St.Each location is designed to represent its respective area, with staff members creating murals along store walls to represent the surrounding neighborhood. Some store locations have their own "find the mascot", and children can obtain stickers and lollipops when they tell a staff member where it is "hiding”. Crew members typically hide the mascot in the stores.
Economic exclusivity and gentrification
Despite being known as a "neighborhood store" with affordable options, Trader Joe's locations are mostly in well-off neighborhoods. In 2022, the typical Trader Joe's customer was a married person living in an urban area, between 25 and 44 years old, earning at least $80,000. When deciding where to open locations, the chain typically looks for areas where the median household income is over $100,000.Conversely, Trader Joe's has also faced opposition for contributing to gentrification. Between 1997 and 2014, Zillow found that homes grow more rapidly in value if they are closer to a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, with such homes consistently being worth more than the mean U.S. home. In 2014, Trader Joe's agreed to halt plans to open a store in a historically black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, following protests led by the Portland African American Leadership Forum. The organization objected to the $2.4 million subsidy offered by the city to Trader Joe's and emphasized that they were not against Trader Joe's but instead were pushing back against the city's history of displacing African Americans. In 2015, along with a proposal to build new affordable housing, the city announced that a different store, Natural Grocers, would be built on the vacant lot.
Products
Private label
Trader Joe's sells many items under its own private labels, at a significant discount to name-brand equivalents, and requires its name-brand suppliers not to publicize this business relationship. By selling almost all of its products under its own labels, Trader Joe's "skips the middle man" and buys directly from both local and international vendors. The company has been criticized for allegedly copying products from vendors after soliciting partnerships and requesting sample products for their private labels.While a typical grocery store may carry 50,000 items, Trader Joe's stocks about 4,000 items, 80% of which bear one of its brand names. Products include gourmet foods, organic foods, vegan and vegetarian foods, frozen foods, imported foods, and domestic and imported wine and beer.
In 1977, the company began introducing international-sounding variants of its brand for some of its private-label ethnic food items, such as "Trader José", "Trader Joe San", and "Trader Giotto" for Mexican, Japanese, and Italian products, respectively. The company also referenced other cultures with branding like "Trader Ming's", "Arabian Joe's", and "Pilgrim Joe" for Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Thanksgiving-themed American products. In July 2020, during the George Floyd protests, an online petition signed by 5,300 people asked the company to rename these products, criticized their labeling as "racist" and accusing the company of promoting "a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes".
The company reacted by stating that it was already in the process of reverting several international foods to Trader Joe's branding and that this decision had already been made several years earlier. Trader Joe's later clarified that some branding referenced in the petition will remain, stating, "We disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions." The petition itself has been criticized on social media for promoting cancel culture and for "wasting time on a trivial issue".
Aldi Nord uses the brand as one of the company's private labels in its stores in Europe, predominantly for snack foods.
Product availability and discontinued products
Trader Joe's discontinues individual products more often than larger grocery chains. A product may be discontinued because of a variety of reasons: it may be a seasonal product; the cost of producing the item may have increased, thereby also increasing its price for consumers; or the item was not selling strongly enough. New items are introduced every week, so Trader Joe's may remove current items to make room for new products on its shelves. In recent years, loyal Trader Joe's customers have gained a new obsession with the holiday products. Stores have a hard time keeping their shelves stocked with holiday products during these seasons. Stores often have a "new items" case with 10 to 15 products, indicating an intentional high turnover of products.Product selection and prices may also differ from state to state. For freshly-prepared items, Trader Joe's tries to source products as close to the stores as possible, which may result in variations with recipes and prices. State laws, taxes, deposit requirements, and distribution costs can also influence how products are priced in each location.
In February 2008, Trader Joe's announced that it would phase out single-ingredient products from China by April 2008, because of unspecified customer concerns.
Cage-free eggs
In February 2016, because of customer feedback, Trader Joe's announced their goal "to have all the eggs sell in western states come from cage-free suppliers by 2020 and all the eggs sell nationally to come from cage-free suppliers by 2025".In March 2018, a consumer protection lawsuit was filed by the Animal Legal Defense Fund against Trader Joe's on behalf of an egg purchaser. The lawsuit sought to stop Trader Joe's from deceptively and misleadingly labeling its cage-free eggs. The consumer argued that Trader Joe's was violating multiple California consumer protection laws by selling cage-free eggs in cartons with representations of hens foraging in pastures, when the eggs were actually from industrial hen houses, where hens do not have access to the outdoors. The case settled in June 2018, in which Trader Joe's agreed to pull the packaging not only in California but nationwide.