Trader Joe's

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Trader Joe's

Type	Private equity
Founded	1958 Greater Los Angeles Area
Headquarters	Monrovia, California
Key people	Joe Coulombe, Founder Dan Bane, Chairman & CEO
Industry	Retail
Products	Supermarket
Revenue	$6.5 billion (2007)^[1]
Website	www.traderjoes.com

Trader Joe's is a privately held chain of specialty grocery stores headquartered in Monrovia, California. As of May 2008, Trader Joe's has a total of 299 stores.^[2] Its stores are located most densely in Southern California, but the grocery company has locations in 22 other states and Washington, D.C. Trader Joe's was founded by Joe Coulombe and is currently owned by a family trust set up by German billionaire Theo Albrecht, one of the two brothers behind Aldi.^[3]

1 History
2 Products
3 Employees
4 Locations
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

An example of a Trader Joe's storefront

Trader Joe's is named for its founder, Joe Coulombe. The chain began in 1958 as a Greater Los Angeles area chain of "Pronto Market" convenience stores. The original Pronto Markets were similar to 7-Eleven stores, so similar that Coulombe felt that the competition with 7-Eleven would be fatal.^[4] He is said to have envisioned the Trader Joe South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean.^[5] He had noticed that Americans were traveling more and returning home with tastes for food and wine they had trouble satisfying in supermarkets of the time. The first store named "Trader Joe's" opened in South Pasadena, California in 1966. This store, on Arroyo Parkway, is still in operation. In response to strong competition from 7-Eleven, the chain differentiated its stores' offerings and doubled the floor space in 1967. In the first few decades of operation, some of the stores offered fresh meats provided by butchers who leased space in the stores. Trader Joe's at one time had sandwich shops and freshly cut cheese and fresh squeezed orange juice. Theo Albrecht bought the company in 1979.^[6] Joe Coulombe continued running the company until he was succeeded by John Shields in 1989. Shields retired in 2001, turning the reins over to Dan Bane. Shields still does consulting for the company.

A Business Week article about the store noted that between 1990 and 2001, the chain quintupled its store count while increasing its profits tenfold.^[3] Supermarket News estimates that Trader Joe's total sales for 2007 was $6.5 billion, which gave it a ranking of No. 23 on the list of "SN's Top 75 Retailers for 2008".^[1] The October 2006 issue of Consumer Reports ranked Trader Joe's the second-best supermarket chain in the nation, after Wegmans.^[7]^[8]

[edit] Products

Trader Joe's describes itself as "your unique grocery store". Products sold include gourmet foods, organic foods, vegetarian food, unusual frozen foods, imported foods, kosher foods, domestic and imported wine, "alternative" food items, and basics like bread, cereal, eggs, dairy, coffee and produce. Non-food items include personal hygiene products, household cleaners, vitamins, pet food, plants, and flowers.

Interior of the Union Square, Manhattan store.

Many of the company's products are considered environmentally friendly.^[9] However, some of its frozen fish products – notably, its orange roughy – come from species sensitive to over-fishing and that are subject to destructive^[10] deep-sea bottom trawling.^[11]^[12]^[13] In October 2007, Trader Joe's began to phase out foods imported from China amid concerns that standards on "organic" products from the country aren't as stringent as they should be.^[14]

Trader Joe's sells many items from any of several of its own private labels. Such labels are quirkily named by the ethnicity of the food in question, such as Trader Jose's (Mexican food), Trader Ming's (Chinese food), Baker Josef's (bagels), Trader Giotto's (Italian food), Trader Joe-San (Japanese food), Trader Johann's (lip balm), Joe's Kids (Kid Foods), and Trader Darwin's (vitamins). By selling almost all of its products under its own label, Trader Joe's "skips the middle man" and buys directly from both local and international small time vendors.^[15]

Trader Joe's is the exclusive retailer of Charles Shaw wine, popularly known as Two Buck Chuck^[9] because of its $1.99 a bottle price in California (although in some locales it sells for over $3 a bottle, due to varying state liquor taxes and transportation costs).

[edit] Employees

According to BusinessWeek, Trader Joe's contributes an additional 15.4% of each worker's gross pay into a company-funded retirement plan. As of 2004, pay for entry-level part-timers was $8 to $10 an hour; first-year supervisors average more than $40,000 a year.^[3]

Trader Joe's also offers health insurance benefits (dental, vision, and medical) to part-time employees and their dependents. Part-time employees must work 900 hours per year (an average of 20 hours per week) and be employed for a minimum of three months consecutively to qualify. All part-time employees are evaluated every 6 months with the possibility of a pay increase. They also receive a 10 percent discount on items bought at the store.^[16]