Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's is an American privately held chain of specialty grocery stores headquartered in Monrovia, California, in Greater Los Angeles. As of 2019, Trader Joe's had a total of 488 stores. Approximately half of its stores are in California, with the heaviest concentration in Southern California, but the company also has locations in 30 other states and Washington, D.C.
Trader Joe's was founded by Joe Coulombe and has been owned since 1979 by a German family trust established by Aldi Nord's owner Theo Albrecht. The chain has offices in Monrovia, California and Boston, Massachusetts.
== 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 so similar to 7-Eleven that Coulombe felt the competition with 7-Eleven would be disastrous.
Coulombe is said to have developed the idea of the Trader Joe's South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean. The Tiki culture fad of the 1950s and 1960s was fresh in the cultural memory, and Trader Vic's was at its height with 25 locations worldwide. 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 branded as "Trader Joe's" opened in 1967. This store, on Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena, California, remains in operation to this day. In the first few decades since opening, 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 freshly squeezed orange juice all in-store.
Germany's Theo Albrecht (owner and CEO of Aldi Nord) bought the company in 1979 as a personal investment for his family. Coulombe was succeeded as CEO by John Shields in 1987. Under his leadership the company expanded beyond California, moving into Arizona in 1993 and into the Pacific Northwest two years later. In 1996, the company opened its first stores on the East Coast in Brookline and Cambridge, both just outside Boston. Shields retired from his position in 2001. Dan Bane succeeded him as CEO after working as President of the Western Division. When Bane became CEO in 2001, there were 156 stores in 15 states.
BusinessWeek reported that Trader Joe's quintupled the number of its stores between 1990 and 2001, and multiplied its profits by ten. Supermarket News estimated Trader Joe's sales for 2015 at $13 billion, and placed Trader Joe's 21st on the list of "SN's Top 75 Retailers for 2016."
In February 2008, BusinessWeek reported that the company had the highest sales per square foot of any grocer in the United States. Two-and-a-half years later and in 2016, Fortune magazine estimated sales to be $1,750 in merchandise per square foot—more than double the sales generated by Whole Foods.
In February 2016, due to customer feedback, Trader Joe's announced their goal "to have all the eggs they sell in western states (CA, OR, WA, AZ, NM and CO) come from cage-free suppliers by 2020 and all the eggs we sell nationally to come from cage-free suppliers by 2025."
The May 2009 issue of Consumer Reports ranked Trader Joe's the second-best supermarket chain in the United States (after Wegmans). In June 2009, MSN Money released its third annual Customer Service Hall of Fame survey results. Trader Joe's ranked second in customer service. Although Ethisphere magazine listed Trader Joe's among its most ethical companies in the United States from 2008 to 2010, Trader Joe's did not make the list in 2011. In 2014, Consumer Reports again ranked Trader Joe's a top-scoring supermarket chain.Category:Department stores
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