Trader Joe's

Make life a treasure hunt filled with fun and adventure

Give customers the best food and beverage values that they can find anywhere and to provide them with the information required to make informed buying decisions

Create values that drive value

• Act with integrity by treating people the way you want to be treated.
• Be product-driven and search the world over for great products.
• Create WOW customer experiences every day by making every experience rewarding, eventful, and fun.
• No bureaucracy. Evaluate everyone on their contribution to the mission, not to group or departmental matters.
• Be a national chain of neighborhood grocery stores.
• KAIZEN! Show up to work every day looking to do better than the day before.
• The store is our Brand.

Diligently act on the behalf of customers to satisfy their dreams related to our products and their experience

The knowledgeable explorer

These knowledgeable explorers see themselves as "traders on the culinary seas, searching the world over for cool items to bring home to (their) customers." Their passion for knowledge and adventure reinforces their belief that people can't truly understand what is happening in the world unless they travel.

While they give off a stress-free, whimsical air, this isn't them trying to "play it cool." It's just who they are: Independently-minded people who do not follow trends but set them. They are not concerned about being liked by everyone. In fact, you "might think of Trader Joe's as one of the more esoteric cable channels," that is only understood or intended for a select few. Their style may be unpolished and unrepossessing at first glance, based on their Hawaiian shirts and funky handwritten signs, but they are filled with warmth, friendliness, fun, individual pride, and company spirit.

Fun, relaxed, and not too serious

The people of Trader Joe's are storytellers, not salespeople. Instead of focusing on prices and stock photography, they invite their audience on a fun and educational adventure filled with interesting facts, exciting sensory details, jokes, and funny pop-culture references.

Their laid-back voice deliberately avoids the use of commands like 'Buy this!' or 'Shop now.' Rather, they evoke a worry-free attitude that says: "We're gonna be around for a long time. If you miss out on this bargain, there'll be another."

Trader Joe's is also not afraid to use a large vocabulary because they respect their audience's intelligence and never speak down to them. They aim to find a balance between being clever and informative without ever sounding stuck-up or snooty. Just see how they tell the story and history of their seasonal Bûche de Noël ice cream.

Value

At Trader Joe's, value is about offering great quality products at a great price. The two can not, and should never be separated. In fact, the brand prides itself on being a purveyor of speciality foods for shoppers who don't want to pay specialty prices.

As founder Joe Coulombe wrote: Trader Joe's "became the best place in the world to buy a good bottle of wine for less than $2.00. That's a position we held for the rest of my days at Trader Joe's."

Product knowledge

Trader Joe's considers themselves an informative retailer. Unlike any supermarket, they pride themselves on being able to tell customers who developed each product, what's in it, how it tastes, if it needs preparing, and why it's a good value.

But to foster this culture of knowledge each store has a special expense account for employees to sample each product and test out recipes. Managers are are even sent on global tours of wine and cheese regions to better understand each product's origin.

The well-educated, well-traveled, and underpaid

Trader Joe's customers are not necessarily affluent or rich, but they are well-educated and understand real value. They are people who choose to read the New Yorker over People magazine. Their inquisitive minds, adventurous stomachs, and love for travel makes them more willing to try new foods.

They are customers, not consumers, and are dissatisfied with mass consumption products, like Coca-Cola and Budweiser. Instead, they make their own decisions on what to buy based on information. They are value-oriented and health-conscious wanting to know where their food comes from and what it contains.

Don't offer self-service options

Even during the global pandemic, Trader Joe's has refused to invest in self-service options like self-checkout, grocery delivery, online ordering, and curbside pickup. Instead, they want to encourage personal interactions. Jon Basalone, President of Stores describes it like this: "The store is our brand and our products work the best when they're sold as part of this overall customer experience within the store. And so we're not ready to give that up. For us, the brand is too important."

Say no to sales, specials, and discounts

With a firm belief that all customers should have access to the best prices at all times, Trader Joe's stays away from anything that could provide better value to one customer over another. As founder Joe Coulombe puts it, "One of the fundamental tenets of Trader Joe’s is that retail prices don’t change unless costs change...Supermarket pricing is a shell game and I wanted no part of it." This also included saying no to these other price manipulators:

• No coupons
• No price matching
• No loyalty programs or membership cards
• No senior discounts
• No weekend ad prices
• No in-and-out pricing
• Absolutely no closeout sales

Don't sacrifice your brand strength for faster growth through franchising

Even though it would lead to faster growth, whenever founder Joe Coulombe was asked about franchising Trader Joe's, he wouldn't "just tell them 'no,' but 'Hell no.'" The store wants to remain having complete control over the quality of their people, products, and prices.

Give up fee revenue to keep prices low

Almost all grocers charge their suppliers a slotting fee, which Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe describes as "the blackmail that vendors pay to have their products on supermarkets' shelves."

While this fee protects the grocery store from incurring a loss if a product doesn't sell, it also raises the product's price for the customer because suppliers offset this cost by raising the price of their products. This practice also only guarantees shelf space to the highest bidder, not to the best product. For these reasons, Trader Joe's has always refused to charge slotting fees to their suppliers, instead opting to "get the right product at the lowest possible cost."

Be willing to stop carrying any product, even if they are an industry standard

"The willingness to do without any given product is one of the cornerstones of Trader Joe's merchandising philosophy." They consider themselves a specialty store and have no interest in offering full lines of products or having a depth of assortment. Instead, they reserve their limited shelf space of 4,000 SKUs to products that only:

• Offer exceptional quality. If a Trader Joe's product can't be differentiated or isn't better than a similar product in a supermarket, they won't sell it. Table salt and deli sandwiches were discontinued for this reason.
• Offer exceptional value. Trader Joe's is no stranger to discontinuing a product over a few pennies of wholesale cost if it means that other stores could offer a competitive or better price. This is why they do not carry Coke or Budweiser.
• Are profitable. You won't find bulky products like paper towels, sugar, or whole wheat flour at Trader Joe's because they have a low value per cubic inch.
• Sell well. It's a democratic process where customers vote with their dollars.

Don't spend marketing dollars on ad agencies, PR firms, or social media

When it comes to marketing, Trader Joe's keeps expenses low, so they can focus on the customer experience. That means saying no to:

• Ad agencies: Trader Joe's relies on their in-house team to design, write copy, and produce their podcast and YouTube videos.
• Public relations firms: To Trader Joe's they are "a waste of money," even during times when their products are recalled.
• Online paid campaigns: Besides their Instagram and Pinterest accounts and their monthly podcast, Trader Joe's doesn't have active Facebook or Twitter profiles, let alone spend money on paid online campaigns.

Instead, Trader Joe's relies on word of mouth marketing, by spending the majority of their marketing dollars on letting customers sample their food. This has resulted in countless fan-based Trader Joe's social media sites that promote the brand for them.

Cut costs, not value or employee benefits

People wonder how Trader Joe's can keep prices low while also treating their employees well and turn a profit. To do this, Trader Joe's takes every opportunity to find ways to cut operational costs, like:

• Cutting hours of operation. Staying open long hours is a waste of energy and as a value retailer you don't need to differentiate yourself with hours.
• Not selling products that raise insurance costs. Kegs of beer and 5lb bags of sugar that come packed twelve to a bale were all discontinued because of risk of injury to the crew.
• Using free imagery. The iconic Trader Joe's 19th century imagery is used because these images are not subject to copyright laws.
• Using cheap shelving. Not only is warehouse shelving cheap, it is also inexpensive to change, and can be easily assembled and disassembled by any employee.
• Buying in bulk and paying in cash. "This means giant 40-50 lbs wheels of cheese at a time. The products are being sent to the TJ kitchen or warehouse where it's being processed.
• Avoiding brand name products. 80% of Trader Joe's products fall under their own label where they cut out the middleman by buying food directly from the source and doing all the packaging themselves.
• Taking advantage of discontinuities. If a vendor had leftover eggs or some unusual product that they couldn't get rid of, Trader Joe's buys it at a low price, repackages it, and sells it.
• Keeping their stores small because big stores just cost too much

Align your budgeting model to your values

Instead of corporate budgeting, Trader Joe's leaves setting targets, planning, and forecasting up to each individual store. This decentralized approach reinforces two of the brand's values:

• KAIZN: This means everybody in the company owes everybody else a better job every day, every year in what they do. So all that corporate expects is that each store do a little better than the previous year.
• We're a national chain of neighborhood grocery stores: Stores are treated as their own entity allowing managers to focus on doing what's right for its neighborhood and customers, rather than focusing on corporate goals.

Only open super-volume stores

When looking to open a new Trader Joe's, founder Joe Coulombe's strategy was to "have a few stores, as far apart as possible, and to make them as high volume as possible." To do this, Joe would:

• Keep to the same demographics. Trader Joe's would seek out areas that attracted the underpaid and overeducated. This included locations near major institutions of learning, hospitals, and high tech corporate offices. It also included "semi-decayed neighborhoods, where...the mortgages were all paid-down,...the kids had left home..." and housing and rental prices were cheaper and more suitable for those "underpaid academics." Each area had to have a high number of households, no less than 40,000, with at least 66% being in their target audience.
• Look for locations with excellent boulevard access. Trader Joe's would avoid easy freeway access as those locations are more prone to holdups.
• Avoid cannibalization of other stores. Instead of measuring the distance between stores using miles, Trader Joe's kept a rule that stores should be no less than twenty minutes apart.
• Avoid areas where people are "strapped" with high mortgages. Sure these families may have high incomes but Trader Joe's considers them "the poorest of the poor" because they are burdened with mortgages and saving for their children's colleges. In Joe's opinion, these people are better off shopping at Costco.
• Avoid areas that do not represent the core customer's values. When driving around the area of a potential store, if Joe Coulombe saw too many campers and speedboats he would cross the option from the list. As he puts it: "People who consume high levels of fossil fuel don't fit the Trader Joe's profile."

As a result, Trader Joe's achieves sales of $1,000/sq foot of total area, while supermarkets $570/sq foot of sales area.

Don't put faith in market testing

As Joe Coulombe wrote: "Each year, 22,000 new products are introduced to the grocery trade, most of them from big guns like Procter & Gable or Colgate, who have conducted elaborate test marketing before going nationwide. Ninety percent of these new products fail."

Instead, Trader Joe's takes a different approach placing small orders of new products and if they sell they order more—if not, leftovers go to charity.

Don't secretly collect data on your customers

As Trader Joe's sees it, collecting customers' data is like spying on them. That is why, even in the age of analytics and AI, they don't have membership accounts, customer relationship management systems, or any other systems to segment, track, or categorize their customers' habits. Instead, they rely on gaining direct feedback from their customers during their daily interactions.

Give generously but be strategic about it

When it comes to non-profit giving, the Trader Joe's philosophy is to give generously but to always:

• Reach your core audience: As a grocer for the overeducated and underpaid, Trader Joe's limits their non-profit giving to events that only those people would attend. This includes pledge drives, museum and art gallery openings, hospital benefits, college alumni gatherings, and chamber orchestra benefits.
• Promote your brand effectively: Never give cash and never buy space in a program. To Trader Joe's, these are a "waste of money" with little to no return. Instead, they focus on donating branded products that add to the experience of an event.
• Be cost efficient: While champagne is always highly requested at events, Trader Joe's never donates it because the "federal excise tax on sparkling wine is way too much." Instead, they stick to donating more cost efficient products, like wine.

Test every product in the harshest conditions

There is no 'pay to play' to get your product on a Trader Joe's shelf, like in most supermarkets. Instead, every product goes through a rigorous Tasting Panel where only 10% of the products actually pass the test.

These Testing Panels are designed to remove any romance and story from the product. "There's nothing in there that makes it comfortable...It's like a cold war interrogation booth, because we want the products that succeed to go through this like ultra-Darwinian exercise to say that they could stand up even to that harshest light of critical evaluation."

If a product passes with a 70% or more approval rating, it is only then that Trader Joe's asks about the price. Then the bargaining begins and "if the cost is too high and we can't get it for less, we won't buy it."

Outsource anything that isn't central to your primary role

Since 1977, Trader Joe's has run its operations on the philosophy that you should outsource anything that isn't central to your primary job. And for Trader Joe's that's everything except buying and selling. As founder Joe Coulombe wrote: "We got rid of our own maintenance people, we sold off almost all the real estate we had acquired during the 1970s, we never took mainframe computing in-house."

Create a culture that gives staff the freedom to have fun and be themselves

Former CEO, John Shields would famously tell new hires that "at the end of 30 days, if you are not having fun, please quit.”

To create a culture where employees actually have fun at their jobs while also genuinely caring about their customers, Trader Joe's first ensures that every employee has the opportunity to be themselves. Instead of trying to shape their crew into a specific corporate mold, they instead hire "outwardly nice" people and just let them loose.

On their first day, new crew members are only given three simple instructions, when it comes to customer service:

• Be yourself. Share stories about your life with customers. No topic is off the table, including politics and religion.
• Be genuine. Don't use scripts. Even when a crew member is asked how they are doing, they are encouraged to answer honestly, even on bad days.
• Be nice. Treat customers like you would a guest in your home, but treat your fellow crew members the same way.

Get your hands dirty

At Trader Joe's employees are encouraged to multi-task without regard to their job description. 'That's not my department' is never an excuse for not helping a customer or fellow employee.

To build this type of culture, leaders constantly are showing that no job is beneath them by sweeping the floors, stocking shelves, and cleaning bathrooms. Trader Joe's even has a policy where every store manager must be at the cash register at least one hour every day to better know the customers and the community. Even CEO Dan Bane goes to stores and helps out by bagging groceries and taking them out to the customer's car.

Hold yourself accountable by always putting your plans into writing

During his time as CEO, Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe, would write a white paper at every important turn of events. As he puts it: "In a white paper you try to write down everything you plan to do, and the reason why you think you should do it. That way, when things don’t work out, you can’t play the role of a Soviet historian and airbrush history. The other important use of a white paper is to circulate it to the troops, to engage their support and solicit their ideas."

Allow staff to take ownership of their work

While Trader Joe’s stores may tell workers what needs to be done, they do not have rules about how to accomplish the tasks at hand. As they see it, there are 1,000 right ways to do something, so let employees determine which is the best approach.

"If you were assigned to write the order for wine, then all the decisions about your section were made by you: how you wanted to re-organize the shelves, what you wanted for a display, the creative signage you needed, or even if you felt like you needed new shelves entirely."

Create opportunities for employees to engage with your products

It is the job of every Trader Joe's employee to try and experiment with every product in the store. During working hours, staff are encouraged to cook dishes in the backroom to share with their coworkers. This environment, not only increases every employee's knowledge of the products, but also has fostered a "You should try this!" mentality when employees interact with customers.

Remove all private offices

When designing their corporate offices, Trader Joe's founder and CEO Joe Coulombe insisted on a factory atmosphere with no private offices. This fostered a culture of transparency where everyone knows what's going on in the company. Joe's desk could be found in a conference room that sat a total of six people.

Even at Trader Joe's stores, there is no manager's office, just a boxed-in area called the 'Captain's Deck' that is visible and open to everyone.*

Get rid of all secretaries

Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe refuses to have any secretaries in any of his companies. They hold too many secrets and add unnecessary layers of bureaucracy that separate executives from staff and customers. As Trader Joe's simply puts it in their Company Values Guide: "We answer our own phones. We are not afraid to talk to customers."

Create a workforce of generalists

Creating personal connections with each customer takes a lot of emotional energy. To help keep employees fresh and alert, Trader Joe's trains their entire staff to do every job in the store including running demo stations, cleaning bathrooms, ordering for each department, stocking, opening, closing, and even going to the bank. This allows managers to rotate employees out of highly interactive positions, like cashier and greeter, after only a couple of hours. In fact, greeters are rotated to another position after only one hour.

Promote from within

In order to keep a strong culture, Trader Joe's is very strict about promoting from within. Over 75% of Trader Joe's supervisors started as crew members and 100% of store managers and regional vice presidents are promoted from lower positions in the company. Many of the office employees also began their career in a Trader Joe's store.

CEO Dan Bane even limits store growth based on the amount of talent they are able to select from within the company. "We won't open a store just because we can, we want to open a store that's run by the right kind of people doing the right kind of things." To train rising talent, Trader Joe's University, a two-day developmental course, was created to offer management, leadership, and communication skills to staff.

Stay fast and loose by eliminating committees and avoiding bureaucracy

Part of the Trader Joe's buying strategy, which they refer to as Intensive Buying, focuses on making quick decisions to beat out their competition by gaining exclusive rights to products. As founder Joe Coulombe explains: "We don't take more than 24 hours to make a buying decision, even if it is over a $1 million purchase." This results in Trader Joe's leaving all buying decisions in the hands of their buyers and not bureaucratic committees, as they are seen as "a waste of time, and (Trader Joe's is) action oriented."

If there is a project that needs cross organizational collaboration, a skunkworks team is formed. These teams fall outside of the existing organizational structure and are made up of staff whose sole task is to focus on solving the problem at hand. When the project is complete, the group is dissolved and the team members are dispersed back into the company structure. As Joe describes it: "I wanted to instill this feeling of transience, to keep the organization loose."

Pay a high starting salary and give raises often

Understanding that "stores with more, better-paid staff have higher sales per square foot and per employee than stores that try to cut customer service costs," Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe made it a practice to:

• Pay both full-time and part-time employees well. To Trader Joe's "a distinction between full-time and part-time is a false dichotomy, when it comes to productivity." So no matter the role, crew members are paid competitively. Full-time employees earn over the median family income of the store's region. Hourly workers earn well above minimum wage.
• Give raises twice per year. Every August and February staff are reviewed and given feedback by fellow crew members, mates, and captains of the store. Based on their performances, they can receive raises that are equivalent to a 7% increase each year.
• Give generous bonuses to store managers. Bonuses don't have a limit and have exceeded 70% of their base pay. Managers, in fact, have the ability to make more than executives if their store does well. As Joe Coulombe sees it: "Unless a bonus system promises, and delivers, big rewards, it should be abandoned."

In an industry where the average turnover rate is close to 50%, these higher salaries have made it easy for Trader Joe's to attract quality workers and keep their turnover rate to less than 10%.  

Take care of your employees during the worst of times

Besides benefits like health insurance, never expiring paid time off, and retirement plans for full- and part-timers, Trader Joe's also ensures that their crew are taken care of in times of disaster.

• When wildfires in California left one store badly damaged, rather than lay people off, Trader Joe's continued to pay staff for any shifts missed. This was not just for weeks but for the entire 13 months that it took to rebuild the store.
• During the early months of COVID when everyone was panic buying, Trader Joe's experienced a surge in sales. They took that extra money and put it towards a bonus pool that gave employees an extra $2 an hour. Even as sales eventually slowed to levels a little below normal, they changed the concept into 'thank you' pay where employees kept that extra $2 an hour for every 4th hour worked.

As Jon Basalone, president of stores, says: “We've been around for over 50 years, and we've never had layoffs. We stay true to what we know works for Trader Joe's and our crew members.”

Align your job titles with your brand's personality

As "traders on the culinary seas," Trader Joe's continues their always present nautical theme by using sailor terms for job titles:

• Crew Members do a little of everything from running the register to stocking shelves. Within this group are also Helmsemen, aka greeters, and Native Bearers, aka box boys.
• Merchants, like Crew Members, do a little of everything but are leaders in setting examples of Wow customer experiences.
• Mates are assistant store leaders.
• Captains are the store leaders. They dictate the strategy and develop their Crew.
• Office Crew Members are made up of everyone else behind-the-scenes.

Find 'outwardly nice' people

It's almost impossible to train someone to be nice, so Trader Joe's needs to get a sense if candidates are nice people during the interview process. John Shields, former CEO of Trader Joe's, would not hire people if they didn't smile within the first 30 seconds of an interview. While this isn't a hard rule across the brand, Trader Joe's has found that the best indicator of finding the right person has been the candidate's ability to just talk to people and have positive engaging conversations.

Interviews begin with the standard Trader Joe's interview questions and then it is the interviewer's job to find what each candidate is passionate about and let them talk about that. Rosalia Medina, a Trader Joe's manager, says that "One of the best questions is, 'What do you like to do in your off time?' And then you'll see their passion, and then from there you could talk about food."

See interview question examples.

Create a sense of discovery and camaraderie

Walk into a Trader Joe's and you are meant to feel like an "honored guest" in a land of fun and adventure filled with "unexpected products" and "cheap thrills." Shoppers don't go to Trader Joe's just for a quick purchase of milk and eggs, but instead to take their time to explore, to try new things, and to talk to warm and friendly people.

The laid-back atmosphere allows people to feel comfortable to initiate conversations with strangers and become instant friends because they are connected by the fact that this is 'their Trader Joe's neighborhood store.'

Limit your product offering to create a better customer experience

Make no mistake, Trader Joe's has reasons for only carrying 10% of the selection that full-sized supermarkets, like Whole Foods, have to offer. With fewer products:

• Employees are well-informed about every product in the store making it easy to give recommendations to customers.
• Customers are less anxious about making a wrong purchase. By only having one choice of a product, like flour or ketchup, customers can count on every product being exceptional. 

Create inside jokes that only your core customers would appreciate

Most supermarkets have a one-size-fits-all label for their self-branded products. Trader Joe's on the other hand, individualizes each label for each of their products with obscure artistic, musical, literary, historical, or scientific allusions. Some examples include the Sir Isaac Newtons, The Bagel Spinoza, The Peanut Pascal, the Heisenberg's Uncertain Blend of coffee beans, and Trader Darwin's Vitamins (for the survival of the fittest).

As founder Joe Coulombe explains: "I wanted to create a silent conspiracy among the overeducated, underpaid people in town, so that as they moved down the aisles they would read secret messages on the products."

Challenge industry standards when deciding how to sell your products

Unlike other grocers, Trader Joe's does not sell fruit or vegetables by the pound, but instead by the item. They found that paying by the pound has tricked shoppers into spending more. By removing weight out of the equation, shoppers know exactly how much they will be spending before even going to the register.

Offer products that have limited availability

Once a product is gone at Trader Joe's, there is no guarantee that it will return. In fact, Trader Joe's has "made a point of going out of stock to encourage the customers to 'buy while it's still there.'" To play on their customer's FOMO, the brand publishes the quantity of these limited products in their promotional flyers to increase the "rarity appeal" and keep customers visiting frequently.

Maximize the number of quality interactions with customers

While it may be more efficient to restock shelves overnight and open self-checkout lines, Trader Joe's does neither in order to create more one-on-one interactions with customers. In fact, the brand keeps more employees on the floor per square foot than any other retail chain. This allows employees to drop what they are doing, no matter how busy they are, to satisfy any customer request.

Staff are also trained to make eye contact with passing customers to invite questions and then to lead (never point) customers to the product they are looking for. And while idle chit-chat amongst crew members is discouraged, staff are highly encouraged to spend as much time as necessary with any customer. This creates opportunities for the customer to bond with the employee, as well as the brand. 

Take the fear out of trying new things

While Trader Joe's does have standard sampling stations, they also let customers (upon request) open up packages, bags, and boxes of food just to try it before they buy it. Customers can also return anything, opened or not, for a full refund, no questions asked—you don't even need a receipt.

Bring your personality to life with a multi-sensory experience

The Trader Joe's experience is about engaging all of your fives sense in order to evoke a sense of adventure, while also making it feel like you are on vacation.

• Sight: From the moment you enter a Trader Joe's store you are surrounded by nautical themed artifacts including ship bells, oars, netting, and a half a rowboat. Staff are dressed in Hawaiian shirts with Bermuda shorts. And unlike other supermarkets, the lighting is designed to be on the warm spectrum rather than a blue spectrum, to avoid a cold sterile looking environment.
• Sound: Instead of a PA system that makes you feel like you are in a generic store, employees communicate with each other by ringing ship bells. One ring means they need another register open, two means the cashier needs assistance, three means a manager is needed for something important.
• Smell & Taste: Besides being able to taste almost any food in the store before purchase, Trader Joe's wants shoppers to expand their pallets as much as possible. Each store host countless tasting events that allow shoppers to smell and taste all the exotic and fun flavors they have collected from around the world. These events are actually the majority of their marketing budget.
• Touch: Trader Joe's has designed its stores to break down as many barriers as possible between customers and their meals. They have even removed the large cumbersome freezer doors to make it easier for shoppers to see what is available, to grab new items, and to give them a try.

Make every store unique to its neighborhood

While supermarkets have planograms to keep each store looking the same down to the square inch, Trader Joe's focuses on each store being different. Yes, the nautical theme is the one consistent piece across all stores, but each store is also given the freedom to design and organize itself in their own creative way.

In-house artists are hired for each location to create all of the murals and signage down to the product labels and price tags. The goal is to have all the artwork reflect the neighborhood that the store is located in. This gives each store its own identity, a friendly neighborhood vibe, and a way to make connections with their customers.

Make shopping an adventure for the kids as well

Don't be surprised when you grab for a bag of chips at Trader Joe's and find a stuffed monkey next to it. Stuffed animals and plastic toys are hidden around most Trader Joe's locations as a way to engage with and entertain kids while parents shop. Any child that finds one receives a lollipop.

Focus your messaging on educating, not selling

Trader Joe's doesn't push for a hard sell in their messaging. You won't find any commanding statements or mandatory sentences like "Buy this!" or "Hurry now." You also won't see just a picture of a product and its price. Instead, they focus on informative advertising.

As Trader Joe's describes it, they are a "store of stories." Each promotion has A LOT of words, specifically written to connect with those who have a thirst for knowledge. Each product description goes into great detail telling its history, how it tastes, and how it differs from the "ordinary stuff."

The Trader Joe's grocery flyer, called the Fearless Flyer, can almost be overwhelming to the eye for anyone who is used to seeing only pictures and prices like in conventional grocery flyers. Even the store's 60-second radio spots focus more on educating people about food rather than brand recognition, only mentioning the company's name once in the opening line: "This is Joe Coulombe of Trader Joe’s with a word on food and wine."

Find creative ways to connect with your core audience's interests

In Trader Joe's early days, they would print the schedules for local operas, libraries, and symphonies on their grocery bags. Not only did this win them favor with these local non-profits but it directly connected the store to their core audience of the well-educated but underpaid.

Send mail to addresses, not individuals

As Trader Joe's founder, Joe Coulombe wrote: "When someone moves, someone just like them is likely to occupy the same address." This idea shaped Trader Joe's direct mail strategy to send their catalog to entire ZIP codes, not just single houses. The areas were chosen based on the likelihood that their core audience of overeducated and underpaid people would be there.

Thanks for listening (1976)

By the time Joe Coulombe retired from Trader Joe's he had written and recorded over 3,300 educational 60-second radio promotions for Trader Joe's. He ended off every single one of those with this tagline.

Pick a theme and use it to name your brand

With a plan to appeal to the well-traveled, founder Joe Coulombe attributes Trader Joe's name and Polynesian style to a mixture of past experiences and late 1960s trends, like:

• The Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland
• The popularity of Mai Tais, Polynesian bars, and Trader Vic's restaurant
• Movies from his childhood like Red Dust, White Shadows in the South Seas, and Trader Horn