Trader Joe's - History

History

Trader Joe's is named after 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 Coulombe felt the competition with 7-Eleven would be ruinous. He is said to have developed the idea of the Trader Joe South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean. 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 its doors in 1967. This store, on Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena, California, remains in operation. Despite the name's implications, barter is not normally accepted as a means of transaction at any Trader Joe's store. In response to 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, freshly cut cheese, and fresh squeezed orange juice. Theo Albrecht, of Aldi Nord, bought the company in 1979. Coulombe was succeeded by John Shields in 1987; under his leadership the company expanded beyond California, moving into Arizona in 1993 and 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. Shields retired in 2001, turning the reins over to Dan Bane.

In November 2001 Trader Joe's pledged to drop all genetically modified food from its product line. In 2009, Trader Joe's pledged to use the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program to inform its purchasing decisions regarding sustainable seafood and to offer only sustainable seafood in stores by December 31, 2012.

A Business Week article about the store noted that, between 1990 and 2001, the chain quintupled the store number and increased its profits by ten times. Supermarket News estimates that Trader Joe's total sales for 2009 were $8 billion, which gave it a ranking of No. 21 on the list of "SN's Top 75 Retailers for 2011." As of 2010, Trader Joe's sells what Fortune magazine estimated to be $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double the sales generated by Whole Foods Market.

The May 2009 issue of Consumer Reports ranked Trader Joe's the second-best supermarket chain in the nation, after Wegmans. In June 2009 MSN Money released its third annual Customer Service Hall of Fame survey results. Trader Joe's ranks second in customer service. Ethisphere Magazine named Trader Joe's one of the most ethical companies in the United States in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2011, however, Trader Joe's did not make the list.

In 2011, Trader Joes' resistance to the Campaign for Fair Food initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) sparked nationwide protests and talk of consumer boycotts among labor, faith, and student organizations. On October 21, 2011, Trader Joe's posted a "customer update" on its website arguing that the Fair Food agreement is "unacceptable to us" and that the farmworkers that make up the CIW are "an entity with which we have no business relationship," before going on to say that Trader Joe's already follows the same labor and purchasing standards the Fair Food agreement would require. On February 9, 2012, Trader Joe's agreed to join the Fair Food program for Florida tomatoes.