Trader Joe's: Difference between revisions

Trader Joe's

File:Trader-Joes.gif
Company type	Private equity
Industry	Retail
Founded	1958 Greater Los Angeles Area
Headquarters	Monrovia, California
Key people	Joe Coulombe, Founder Dan Bane, CEO
Products	Supermarket
Website	www.traderjoes.com

Trader Joe's is a privately held chain of specialty grocery stores headquartered in Monrovia, California. As of October 2006, Trader Joe's has a total of 255 stores. Its stores are located most densely in Southern California, but the chain has locations in 21 other states as of 2006. The chain 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.

History

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. Coulombe felt that the competition with 7-11 would be fatal. He is said to have envisioned the Trader Joe South Seas motif while on vacation in Tahiti. He had noticed that Americans were travelling 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 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. Albrecht bought the company in 1979. Coulombe continued running the company for ten years. He was succeeded by John Shields in 1989. Shields retired about ten years later, turning the reins over to Dan Bane.

A Business Week article about the store noted that between 1990 and 2001, the chain quintupled its store count while increasing its profits tenfold. The October, 2006 issue of Consumer Reports ranked Trader Joe's the second-best national supermarket chain in the nation, after Wegmans.

Products

File:TjQuiche.jpg

Frozen quiche from Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's describes itself as "your unique grocery store". Products sold at "TJ's" include gourmet foods, organic foods, vegetarian food, unusual frozen foods, imported foods, domestic and imported wine, and "alternative" food items. Some non-food items, including personal hygiene products (e.g. Burt's Bees items) and household cleaners, are also available. Many of the company's products are considered environmentally friendly.

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), Bagel Jozef's (bagels), Trader Giotto's (Italian food), and Trader Joe-San (Japanese food).

Trader Joe's is also known for its Charles Shaw wine products, popularly known as Two Buck Chuck because of its $1.99 a bottle price (although in some locales it sells for as much as $3.99 a bottle, due to varying state liquor taxes and transportation costs).

Employees

According to Business Week, Trader Joe's pays better-than-union wages, generous bonuses, and 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 $12 an hour; first-year supervisors average more than $40,000 a year.

Trader Joe's also offers health insurance benefits (dental, medical, and vision) to part-time employees and their dependents. Part-time employees must work 900 hours per year (an average of 20 hours per week) to qualify.

Employees are referred to in the company as "crew members", and positions within the store are references to merchant and naval seagoing ranks: the store's manager is called the Captain, while the assistant manager is the First Mate. Until their probation ends, new captains are called Commanders and new assistant managers are called Second Mates.

Part-time crew members work as few as 25 hours a week and no more than 40 hours per week. They usually do not supervise other employees. Newly promoted full-time crew members are known as Novitiates, work 47.5+ hours per week, and are entry-level supervisors. They are promoted to Specialists and then Merchants. Merchants are normally considered promotable to store management positions. Captains are eligible for promotion to Regional Vice Presidents. Full-time crew members have the opportunity to be promoted into management positions, while part-time crew members may train to become full-time crew members. Part-time crew members may stay at their chosen store and can relocate to other stores with management permission if they choose. Full-time employees are generally transferred after about two years in a store. Unless they make themselves available for long-distance transfer, they are normally only transferred within the territory of their Regional Vice President, and not long distances. The company offers packages for distant full-time relocation and has a "regional mobile thriver" (RMT) program. RMTs are given an accelerated training regimen in return for willingness to go anywhere in the nation.

Unlike employees at many of its supermarket competitors, Trader Joe's employees are non-union. An attempt to unionize at its South Pasadena, California store failed in 2003.

Locations

As of December 2006, Trader Joe's has stores in the following states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.

As of December 2006, Trader Joe's has a total of 271 stores. The most recent stores opened in Brentwood, California; Madison, Wisconsin; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Roswell, Georgia; Glendale, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois (River North); Sandy Springs, Georgia; Cary, North Carolina; Walnut Creek, California; Carson City, Nevada; Morgan Hill, California; and Norcross, Georgia.

Stores are also slated to open in Atlanta, Georgia (Midtown); Hillsboro, Oregon; Irvine, California (Sand Canyon); Marietta, Georgia; and Templeton, California.

Sources

• Leading Listener: Trader Joe's, an October 2004 article from Fast Company
• Shopper's Special: Trader Joe's, a September 2004 article from Workforce Management
• Trader Joe's: The Trendy American Cousin, an April 2004 article from Business Week
• The Nation's Best Grocery Stores, an article about the supermarket rankings of Consumer Reports
• German success stories in America: Trader Joe’s, a January 2004 article from the Deutsche Welle website
• Trader Joe's targets 'educated' buyer, an August 2003 article from The Seattle Times
• For Trader Joe's, a New York Taste Test, March 2006, The New York Times

External links

• Official Web site