Why trader joes cheap

Eighty percent of the products carried by Trader Joe's are in-house. While that means customers can't get those products anywhere else, it also means the grocer buys those goods directly from suppliers , cutting out the middlemen in a supply chain that can drive up costs. The creativity of the in-house products is also important.

Some of the most popular products include Chili-Lime Chicken Burgers, Cookie Butter a cookie-flavored nut butter , and corn-and-chili salsa. While Whole Foods has private-label products, they tend to be more basic. The company also sells a wider variety of organic and healthy brands. As Walmart and other grocers begin to stock these products, consumers have less of an incentive to visit Whole Foods. Credit Cards Credit card reviews. Best credit cards Best rewards credit cards. Best cash back credit cards.

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Best savings accounts. Best checking accounts. Best CD rates. Their stores are bright, fun, and happy places jam-packed with products we never even knew we needed until they jumped right off the shelves and into our carts. The real pleasure, though, lies at the checkout counter, where we find that, despite the fact that we maybe went a little crazy overloading that cart, the overall price is nowhere near as bad as feared. So how does Trader Joe's manage to keep their prices so low?

Basically, they take a tried-and-true approach of keeping their own expenses down, and they pass those savings on to shoppers. For years and years, Trader Joe's has sold its bananas at 19 cents each Trader Joe's CEO Dan Bane explained that they used to sell their bananas by the pound, like other grocery stores, but because Trader Joe's doesn't have scales in-store, they would pre-package them in plastic bags with four or five bananas in each pack.

Then one day, Bane visited a Trader Joe's that had a retirement home nearby. And they've been 19 cents ever since. Joe Coulombe, better known as the Trader Joe's founder who served for 30 years as its first CEO, is the man behind the grocery empire.

As Coulombe himself recounted on the podcast, his story starts back in , when he was running a chain of convenience stores in Los Angeles.

Fast forward to when he decided he no longer loved the "convenience store formula," and so Coulombe opened the first Trader Joe's store in Pasadena, California. And that store is still standing there now! Surely you've wondered about those tropical shirts that Trader Joe's crew members cheerfully wear.