know you ever wanted and then can't somehow live without.

Today we are going to Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's. The gingersnap cookies.

The babka is unbelievable.

Coconut rolls.

Those are my favorite things I've ever had in my life.

The little signs with the corny jokes on them.

Is that crazy to say like it just has a better vibe?

People love Trader Joe's.

They really do.

Welcome to Trader Joe's, where super friendly workers help you

shop for things like kale gnocchi and vegan tikka masala.

Trader Joe's calls itself your neighborhood grocery store,

except it's grown way beyond your neighborhood to over 500 stores

nationwide.The late founder Joe Coulombe opened the first

location in Los Angeles County in 1967.

He then sold Trader Joe's to grocery giant Aldi in 1979.

The quirky grocery brand hasamassed a cult following among health

and value conscious shoppers.

It's so addicting.

Prices and quality put together is unmatched pretty much

anywhere else. Experts estimate Trader Joe's outsells all of the

competition when it comes to sales per square foot.

The company brought in estimated total sales of $13.7

billionin 2019.

I'm at Trader Joe's right now.

The fan fervor around Trader Joe's has consumers begging for

more, even starting petitions for new locations.

There are none nearby.

And I've begged and beseeched.

There are even Instagram influencers dedicated to Trader Joe's

products. In terms of overall customer satisfaction, Trader Joe's

was the highest ranking national brand in Consumer Reports' 2019

ranking of grocery chains.

Customers report high levels of satisfaction despite the fact

that Trader Joe's is not necessarily convenient or a one-stop

shop. It has a limited selection of meat, produce and toiletries,

and there's no deli, self-checkout, online shopping or delivery

service.Sometimes I feel like they're missing key things that you

need to like make dinner.

I get it.I know I could get a larger and more affordable

selection of my diet staples like meat and produce somewhere

else. In fact, I live right next door to another major grocery

store.But twice a month I travel 100 blocks to shop at Trader

Joe's on72nd and Broadway in New York City.

I wait in massive lines at what's officially the busiest Trader

Joe's in the United States.

Then I carry two heavy bags up and down four flights of stairs

between the subway and my apartment.

Trader Joe's may not be the very best all around grocery store,

but it's not trying to be.

The company does certain things so well, it's built one of the

most passionate fan bases in the grocery business.

Here's how. The thing that's preposterous, right, is it's the

anti grocery store.

I often say imagine that I was pitching to investors the concept

of a new grocery store.

And I said, we're gonna have virtually no branded goods.

Nothing's ever gonna be on sale.

There's no coupons.

There's no loyalty card.

No self-checkout.

We're going to have cramped aisles and small stores with limited

selection. No TV ads.

Would you invest?

And people of course go, "No.

That sounds crazy."

Trader Joe's doesn't draw customers in with wide shiny aisles or

high tech shopping.

The company does minimal marketing and didn't have a social

media presence until just a few years ago.

Trader Joe's presents itself as a quaint local store.

Everything is hand-drawn, handwritten, and that gives the store a

very kind of low-key personal feeling.

It also gives a feeling that you're kind of in a market or a

local store that is not overly commercial.

Trader Joe's has I think really captured the culturalzeitgeist

in a way as far as not only tapping into the foodie culture, but

then also kind of the movement away from traditional and

established national or global brands and overly processed or

produced food.

The neighborhood market atmosphere helps shoppers feel that

they're making healthy and environmentally friendly choices.

In terms of sustainability,people have this warm, fuzzy feeling

and it's kind of reflected in the packaging.

Mark Gardiner is a former marketing executive who became

intrigued by the Trader Joe's brand.

So he worked as a crew member, stocking shelves and ringing up

customers at a Kansas City, Missouri location for a year starting

in 2011.

Then he wrote a book about it called Build a Brand like Trader

Joe's. Gardiner says Trader Joe's might look like a local store,

but its environmental impact is not necessarily better than other

grocery chains.

When I worked there, we had a product that was naan bread and the

naan bread was baked and frozen in India and shipped frozen to

Trader Joe's stores.

That's pretty crazy.

You can bake naan bread anywhere.

Trader Joe's has made efforts to be more environmentally

friendly, sometimes when under public pressure.

Trader Joe's may not operate just like a local market.

But the experience of being at one helps us feel good about our

shopping decisions.

The unique products that are only available at Trader Joe's.

Zhoug sauce. Haven't seen that anywhere else except Trader

Joe's.Teeny tiny avocados.

I feel like nobody else has those little avocados.

Trader Joe's presents itself as a local store, but one with

worldly connections.

Founder Joe Coulombe gave the store a south seas theme, complete

with Hawaiian shirt clad employees who are called captains and

crew members. The theme plays upon the idea of merchants sailing

the oceans to bring home diverse foods from around the world.

Trader Joe's product developers travel the world seeking

inspiration for these recipes.

They discuss trips to NewZealand, Japan, the Republic of Georgia

and beyondin an episode of the official company podcast.

They present their products as if they are local discoveries,

something that someone found when they were, let's say, traveling

Italy and they're now bringing it to you.

The result?Trader Joe's products feel specially sourced, truly

unique, and like they can't be found in other grocery stores.

The products seem even more one of a kind due to a generous use

of descriptive adjectives.

They don't just have cheddar cheese.

They have Wisconsin farmhouse cheddar cheese.

Or, you know, their gummy bears aren't just gummy bears.

They are fish shaped.

And so they're called Scandinavian swimmers.

Customers want to feel like they are smart shoppers.

If you can make them feel like they are in the know or that they

have found something that other people haven't, then that really

increases the value perception that they get from the price.

When an exotic new product comes out, you might get your hands on

it or you might not.

What makes Trader Joe's products seem even more special is they

come and go.

Trader Joe's regularly introduces new products and then

discontinues others since the stores are relatively small and

shelf space is limited.

So there's also this issue of scarcity.

If I like the item, buy it now.

I'm not sure it'll be here next month.

There is an element of impulse shopping that's going on right

because of the treasure hunt.

There's a sense of discovery — of things that feel rare and

urgent.Sometimes when I come home from Trader Joe's, I find

myself telling my husband everything I bought.

And your favorite lava cake.

It's almost like I'm bragging to him, like, look what I found.

And the process of making those discoveries is fun, too, because

it's not too overwhelming.

Trader Joe's stores are typically 10,000 to 15,000 square feet

in size. The average grocery store is about

40,000 square feet, while supercenters like Walmart or Costco

can exceed 200,000 square feet.Trader Joe's stores carry about

4,000 SKUs or scannable units of inventory.

The average grocery store carries about 30,000 SKUs, while

supercenters can hold four times that.

Researchers say too many choices can lead to paralysis.

It's easier to decide what you want when choosing from a smaller

selection of items like at Trader Joe's.

What customers really want is they want the perception of choice,

but they want the experience of no conflict, of less choice.

They want an easy choosing experience.

Sheena Iyengar conducted a well-known experiment that studied

just that. In the study, Iyengar set up a jam sampling station at

a grocery store. She found that more people purchased jam when

there were less options to choose from.

Customers also feel more confident they chose the best of what

was here. So the entire experience makes them feel both more

competent as well as more confident.

What Trader Joe's doesn't want you to know is that you can find

very similar or identical products at other grocery stores.

The company sells more than 80 percent private-label goods,

meaning they're made by third party manufacturers and sold with

Trader Joe's branding.

And Trader Joe's is notoriously secretive, especially about who

their suppliers are.

That way you don't know where their products really come from.

They don't want customers to feel that they have an alternative

way to get the same thing.

But in some cases, they actually could.

Trader Joe's sources some of its products from major

manufacturers that make all kinds of familiar goods.

And some of those goods under different brand names may actually

be similar or identical to the private label version sold at

Trader Joe's. For example, a 2017 Eater investigation found that

Naked Juice, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, has provided Trader Joe's

with bottled smoothies.

And when you compare a couple of Trader Joe's smoothies with

their naked juice counterparts, the ingredients are nearly

identical.But Trader Joe's can also have exclusive supplier

relationships.

I know when I worked there, there was a frozen pizza from Italy

and it was a little family in Italy somewhere that made the

pizzas. And Trader Joe's was their only customer.

That is obviously not the case for most products.

Now Trader Joe's does prefer, if possible, to tweak the recipe so

that technically they can say, ok look, this is completely

unique to us.The media expected there to be some backlash towards

this idea that Trader Joe's was trying to pretend as if these

products with their own.

But I think that what consumers discovered is, you know what, I'm

going to get the same product at a lower price and a better

shopping environment at Trader Joe's.

After all, one of the grocery store's biggest draws?

The prices are amazing.

Joe Coulombe established Trader Joe's in the 60s with a certain

customer in mind.

Coulombe said he created Trader Joe's to cater to the increasing

numbers of people getting a college degree.

It's the person who has good taste perhaps, who likes to try new

things but doesn't necessarily want to spend a great deal of

money.So how does Trader Joe's keep prices down?

By keeping its costs down.

For one thing, Trader Joe's sells mostly private-label goods

which are cheaper than name brand goods like Haagen-Dazs ice

cream or Starbucks coffee.

Experts say Trader Joe's is also able to negotiate better

pricing from suppliers by purchasing goods in larger quantities.

After all, Trader Joe's offers a smaller selection of products

than traditional grocery stores and thus sells larger quantities

of each item. It's also possible that Trader Joe's has help from

a corporate parent, Aldi.

Aldi could leverage its relationships with suppliers to help

Trader Joe's get better pricing.

Despite all these cost saving measures, experts say Trader Joe's

isn't necessarily cheaper than other discount grocery stores.

It just feels especially cheap.

I'm not sure if it's so much the reality of a big price

difference as it is the perception that you're getting a better

value from Trader Joe's.