Trader Joe's meta-discussion

I’ll be the first to admit, that I’m not much of a cook. One of the things I do like about much of tj’s prepared and semi-prepared foods, is that much of it has already been “curated” it may not be excellent but it is very likely to be good and most of the pricing is reasonable, they seem to have few bombs in the bunch. As to your reference other markets, I’m located close to NYC and of the markets listed, only Whole Foods operates in this area. Competition was stifled here years ago by many of the existing chains merging rather than improving. Tbh, I don’t think of TJ"s so much as a supermarket, but a successful food hybrid (and a welcome one).

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Indeed. I do just about everything curbside. Groceries (Giant and Sam’s Club), hardware (TrueValue and Home Depot), chandleries (West Marine and Fawcett), pharmacy (CVS and Giant), local restaurants, liquor stores (no wine or beer in groceries here in Maryland), and of course Amazon (Prime). Shopping from Whole Foods to our local cheese shop supports curbside pickup.

Inside and masked is still a risk. Why take it? For TJ to come out and say they won’t support online shopping and curbside pickup is societally irresponsible. To me that puts them firmly in the category of convenience food outlets like 7-11 and Piggly Wiggly. Why does TJ refuse? I question the judgment of their management.

This thread led me to check Google reviews of TJ to see if I was missing anything. It doesn’t appear that I am. Limited selection, low price leaders with basics like chicken and beef a bit pricey. Staples are expensive.

I’ll repeat myself that I can see the appeal if you can walk but even then having to go inside during a pandemic as a matter of corporate policy is ill-advised. Am I correct they don’t even have aisles marked one way? The local Nextdoor group seems to indicate that is the case.

Trader Joe’s is an overall nay for me in the best of times and certainly in our current time.

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Pathmark? Shop-Rite?

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Honestly can’t remember about the aisle flow because I was in and out so fast. On a mission! Seriously, TJ’s was the fastest shop I have been able to manage thus far during the pandemic.

Also it’s interesting to read here about the use cases that folks have regarding TJ’s: both unmet (contactless shopping) and met (such as a curated selection of prepared foods and staple ingredients).

I do shop in-person largely because I get groceries for two households. There’s no way my wonderful elderly neighbor could manage online shopping. Me being able to source the foods she wants makes it easier for her to stick to her resolve to stay home. Plus I know my neighbor well enough to make educated guesses about acceptable substitutes for any out-of-stock items.

So as someone who mainly does in-store grocery runs at a mainstream grocery chain every 2 or 3 weeks, I also make a point of avoiding a grocery store near me—not TJ’s—that’s well-frequented by delivery shoppers who provide contactless service. The delivery shoppers slow me down as they look for items to fill their orders. Polite and professional people, but they might be searching for unfamiliar items to fulfill someone’s shopping list.

Many trade-offs during these times. Sigh.

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Denise, I think you have put your finger on the biggest downside of curbside pickup. In my perspective, the total balance of pros and cons definitely leans toward curbside. We rarely tick the box allowing the picker to make substitutions so sometimes we come up short. There is no substitute (ha!) for someone who knows needs and indeed what is in stock at home.

With that in mind I straddle the fence. Denise, you could shop online for your neighbor and make a quicker run in for the shortfalls. You could. I’m not saying you should. I hope you will as it will keep you safer and I like you.

I remain resolute that online shopping and curbside pickup should be the norm. Certainly for HOers - if you can post here you can shop online. For TJ to make a corporate statement that they won’t support curbside pickup is irresponsible. Who thinks they don’t make their numbers with an inventory control system they could plug into online shopping/curbside?

Yes, everything about it is trade-offs. And negotiating among all of us here about which benefit outweighs which disadvantage is tricky at best, partly because each of us knows a great deal of background information behind what we type on the screen, far too much to laboriously write out (for example, everyone can recognize that the story behind your elderly neighbour could be much more involved than what you said). And no matter how “absolute” we try to make certain requirements, there is almost always a good example of why they cannot be absolute. (I just thought of a no-visits restriction in a nursing home that was so tightly applied that someone’s mother ended up dying alone, even though her family kept asking for an exception.)

One of my trade-offs is I have no car and therefore no trunk to load things into, so I need to modify many recommendations in order to make them sensible for my situation.

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We’re on the same page about keeping safe, that’s for sure. Also the part about being Hungry Onion friends. :grinning:

My hypothesis is that I’m faster than any delivery service shopper is likely to be at covering the needs of our two households thus taking some amount of exposure risk out of the “system“—admittedly while moving some increment of that risk onto myself. I’m trying to keep as low-impact as I can for our situation.

P.S. Also I do use CSAs and other outdoor/low contact shopping to fulfill as much as I can.

I used to feel exactly like you. About 15 years ago, we visited Trader Joe’s a couple times. My family enjoyed the vibe, but I declared it a fraud and ignored it for 5 years. Why would I shop there when Whole Foods had so much more variety? (To be fair, Whole Foods was actually affordable back then.) Then, I ended up there by chance for random reasons. It grew on me and the rest is history. Now, we are Trader Joe’s. Once the pandemic is over, we should meet up and go. I cannot stress how invaluable TJ’s is when traveling. You can be guaranteed to have 85% of the same inventory no matter where you are in the country. I think TJ’s peaked around 2015, but they are still hands down my favorite grocery store.

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I wonder how much difference one-way aisles make. Is passing allowed? I mean, I try to follow the arrows, but if someone is standing there looking for the right kind of X, am I supposed to wait for them or can I pass them to get to what I need? If yes, then why does it matter which direction I came from? Isn’t it better if people spend less time in the store overall, rather than spend extra time walking around? And people go back and forth looking at all the chips, or produce. I think limiting capacity and group size is about all the stores can realistically do.

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Not saying their aren’t other markets, but of the ones listed only WF is in this area. The ones you mention would be included under “etc.”

Unless “no passing” is strictly policed and everyone patiently waits 6 feet behind those idiots like me who take forever to make up their mind (yes, I’m That Guy, sorry), then one-way aisles make no difference at all.

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Even with California being the new center of the Covid storm none of the markets here in South OC are controlling aisle direction any more. People seem to respect the distance guidance and pass by very quickly when they need to.

In the other side of the equation there was an incident in LA yesterday where anti-mask protestors ran through a market and a luxury department store confronting masked customers and employees. I just learned that a similar incident is expected in the OC tomorrow.

Good time to just stay home.

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This is exactly how I feel. I try to look at overall community risk and figure out how I can mitigate it without unduly increasing my personal risk. From my perspective, the folks who do the hunting and gathering for online/curbside pick up often don’t know the store layout and seem to often spend a while trying to find things. I sort my shopping list by location and get in and out pretty quickly. I even go to a store that’s a bit further away so there is less of a chance of running into anyone I know who may want to socialize.

Over the summer I was part of a CSA that delivered and got any missing produce from my local farmers’ market. Now I order from a former produce supplier who primarily services restaurants. They are a closed environment and need the business. I do the same for meat.

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Exactly. So I’m forced to basically ignore the idea of staying home, which is not good. (In my case, not having a car is actually not by choice, meaning I can’t afford a grocery delivery service.)

Some stores in my area of NJ have one way aisles, some don’t. I am able to get through the store much quicker in stores with two-way aisles. Invariably, the item I need is in the middle of the aisle going in the same direction as the one in, I’m forcing me to go down the other-way aisle even though I don’t want or have to.

I think controlling how many people are allowed in at a time is way more important than one way aisles. Many stores did that for a while but have discontinued the practice. Fortunately the stores have longer hours now so shoppers can be more spread out during the day and since I am not currently working I have the luxury of being able to shop at less popular times of the day.

To get us back on track - I find Trader Joe’s does an excellent job of limiting shoppers. I don’t go often but there are a few things they carry that I really like. I went not that long ago and didn’t want/need a cart but had to take one. That’s how they keep count of how many people are in the store.

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I’ve followed this thread sporadically since inception. The posts seem to focus on one product or another without addressing the underlying question of whether to go into Trader Joes at all.

Well, yeah. That is, in fact, the entire purpose of this thread. I get that the thread title is ambiguous in that respect (and in a previous thread we did have another troll crapping on Trader Joe’s, based on the same misunderstanding), but since you have, in fact, read enough to understand what the thread is really about there’s no excuse for you derailing the discussion like this.

Especially since by your own admission, you’ve only been to TJ’s twice–which is to say, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

At the risk of being bull-headed I think people should learn to cook. sigh

And I think we should have a 20-hour work week. But we don’t, so a lot of people don’t have a hell of a lot of time in their day for cooking. Which sucks, because it means we can’t all be as smugly superior as you are.

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What gives you the impression that no one who shops at TJs can cook?
And the Summer of Love spawned the whole natural/healthy food industry.

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Those folks, just a little older them me, decided that Home Ec was discriminatory because almost only girls took it (I did too, because that was where the girls were). They also said shop was discriminatory because only boys took it. Rather than getting girls into shop and boys into Home Ec they fell out of curricula across the country. That is why I blame the summer of love for the decline of cooking ability in the United States.

My opinion has nothing to do with a business model but rather my opinion on a public health policy in the time of a pandemic and what makes me more comfortable.

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It’s possible, though I’d tend to put much greater emphasis on a different and slower shift:

1800: “If someone in this house doesn’t learn to cook, we’ll all starve”. Literal truth without exaggeration.

2000: “We can always get something somewhere”.

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