Grocery shopping usually a mundane task, but at Trader Joe’s, people can’t get enough

By THOMAS ROBERG, UConn Jour­nal­ism
Decem­ber 14, 2019

Trad­er Joe’s was estab­lished in 1958, and since then has grown to almost 500 stores nation­al­ly.  It has gained a cult-like fol­low­ing from its cus­tomers.  In this pod­cast, I take a first-time shop­per there to get gro­ceries, and explore the brands eccen­tric­i­ties.  In fact, the store only sells about 4,000 prod­ucts, as opposed to a tra­di­tion­al gro­cery store that sells around 50,000.

Lis­ten here:

[sound­cloud url=“https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/727446475” params=“color=#2e445e&auto_play=true&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true” width=“100%” height=“300” iframe=“true” /]

Here’s the full sto­ry about Pirate Joe’s in Cana­da:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Htr2TxZ6‑o]

Check back for the next episode, where I’ll be review­ing anoth­er pop­u­lar chain; Whole Foods.

***

Thomas is a senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut study­ing Jour­nal­ism.  He has been shop­ping at Trad­er Joe’s since one opened in Man­ches­ter in 2018.  Only about 25 min­utes from UConn, Thomas quick­ly became a fan of the store.

TOP IMAGE: Trad­er Joe’s store­front by Sikan­der Iqbal, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikipedia