Robert S.
Yelp
Trader Joe's is a really nice grocery store. Being from Rhode Island, our Trader Joe's do not allow wine to be sold, so I have to go to the Massachusetts stores to buy wine. This one is on the way to Provincetown, so it was an easy stop.
Trader Joe's is headquartered in Monrovia, California. The chain has over 530 stores across the United States. Trader Joe's is named after its founder, Joe Coulombe. The company began in 1958 as a Greater Los Angeles area chain known as Pronto Market convenience stores. Coulombe felt the original Pronto Markets were too similar to 7-Eleven, which he described as the "800-pound gorilla of convenience stores", concerned the competition would be too much.
Coulombe developed the idea of the Trader Joe's South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean.The Tiki culture craze was still widespread in the United States in the 1960s, so in a direct nod to the fad, the Trader Joe's name itself was a spoof on Trader Vic's, the famous tiki-themed restaurant that had opened its first location in the Beverly Hilton in 1955. Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills was notoriously expensive to eat at, but Trader Joe's in Pasadena would provide an irreverent and less expensive offering of food and drink.
In years past, BusinessWeek reported that the company had the highest sales per square foot of any grocer in the United States. Fortune magazine estimates sales to be $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double the sales generated by Whole Foods.
Great prices, great quality, great customer service.