Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's stocks roughly 4,000 items against 30,000 or more at a conventional supermarket, sells about 80 percent private label, buys direct from manufacturers, runs no loyalty programme and advertises almost nowhere. Joe Coulombe converted a small convenience chain into it from 1967 by aiming at educated customers with modest incomes, and the Albrecht family trust behind Aldi Nord has owned it since 1979. Sales per square foot are among the highest in American grocery, and the narrow assortment is what produces the buying power and the stocking speed behind that number. Coulombe explained his own decisions in a memoir finished after his death, and Zeynep Ton's research puts the chain's high wages and low turnover against competitors that staff more thinly.

2 books