Posted on 02/29/2020 10:11:29 PM PST by nickcarraway
Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.
So he found a new way to bring everything from a then-exotic snack food called granola to the California-produced wines that for flavor compared with anything from France. And he made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky little grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.”
From the time he opened his first store in Pasadena, California, in 1967 until his death Friday at age 89, Coulombe watched his namesake business rise from a cult favorite of educated but underpaid young people — and a few hippies — to a retail giant with more than 500 outlets in over 40 states.
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Today at Aldi I purchased a gallon of milk for $1.99!
Today at Walmart, I purchased a gallon of milk for $1.35.
Their grass-fed beef is great, though, as are their chicken breasts.
I rarely go to Aldi because it doesn’t open until 9:30 a.m. My day has moved on by then. Just once in a while, when I hear of a great deal on turkey breasts or something.
I don’t go to Lidl because it’s on the wrong side of the highway.
If you are paying $1.35 a gallon for the milk the farmer is getting pennies on the dollar. Wal-Mart did a bait and switch with dairy farmers in this area, about building a new processing plant that would take all the milk from miles around. Sounded great, right? Farmers cheered.
They decided to only buy from ONE factory farm with 10,000 cows and shut out everybody else, even when the local farmers could pool their output and match the one factory farm.
Oh, I don’t know. On Friday, the Walmart in the county seat was charging more than double the price for milk and eggs as the one nearer me. I think the manager decides the price based on “what the market will bear.” I bore it because it was more convenient to stop there.
How much??? Gotta be a typo.
I have never had Aldi milk that went bad. Not ever. And I’ve been buying milk at Aldi exclusively for several years.
Trader’s Joe is a great supermarket. We love the one we go to. It is across the street from a Publix and down the street is a Whole Foods and a Spouts Farmers Market...
There is one a block away. I’ve been there a half dozen times. My wife goes every so often.
I never got the appeal.
There isn’t an Aldi’s nearby.
Lowes Foods is just around the corner. I go there.
There isn’t an Aldi’s nearby.
Lowes Foods is just around the corner. I go there.
$1.35 a gallon. And eggs are $0.36 a dozen.
But more than double that in the county seat.
I discovered Trader Joe’s in the early ‘70s - it was a wonderful place for quality gourmet foods (back when you couldn’t get decent cheese in most stores, let alone all the things we take for granted now) and inexpensive wines that were good and fantastic values. Some of the values/quality were unbelievable. There as an astonishingly good 3 vintage blend of Napa Valley Cabernet from Spring Mountain that was about $4 a bottle in 1978 that drank well for close to ten years (I bought several cases). Made to do something with some vintages that were less than stellar (including the disastrous 1972) they couldn’t bulk out effectively, it turned out to be far more than the some of its parts.
I don’t much care about Joe’s politics, but it really was the students’ friend back in the day. I don’t buy the wines their now (though my kids sometimes do), but we still find it worth a stop in our shopping.
What was revealing to me was that in 1979 Trader Joes was sold to the same family that owns the Aldi supermarket chain from Germany.
“’ve been shopping Trader Joe’s since around 1972. I think it had alcohol, chocolate, cheese, and not a whole lot else at the start. But always an adventure. RIP, Joe!”
I lived blocks from their early forerunner stores, called “Pronto Market” in the late 50s/early60s.
TJs has soold importer beers, and cheap CA wine since at least the early 70s
FYI neighborhoods ask the company to open stores nearby.
The ALDIs buyout is relatively recent, and TJs has
operated as always independently. ssince.
I saw Gene Rayburn on a celebrity Card Sharks from around 1980. He was playing for Planned Parenthood because he and his wife were “concerned about overpopulation.”
The ALDIs buyout is relatively recent, and TJs has
operated as always independently. ssince.
One of the Aldi brothers bought TJ’s in 1979. Joe only owned it for 10 years or so. They went from 100 stores to 500 stores in the last 20 years.
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