My New Favorite Place to Shop

I've been a long-time admirer of Trader Joe's and their business model.  There are no Trader Joe's factories.  Their model is a lot like a small, privately owned grocery store.  A lot of their products are made by the big companies, but Trader Joe's keeps the cost of their products down (sometimes in half) by having a contract with these big companies that doesn't allow them to advertise their affiliation with making products for Trader Joe's.  This is great as a consumer because I don't have to coupon (which also costs a company money to do) to get a great deal on great food products.

They have pretty good prices on organic.   Organic at the regular supermarket is almost always outside of my budget.  I have a heart attack just looking at the $6/half pint price of organic blueberries (one of the dirty dozen veggies/fruits)!  Trader Joe's prices on some of their organic products are pretty good compared to your regular grocery store and oftentimes it looks and tastes better too.

They have a wide variety of different foods.  I love that I can get different types of peanut butter (including something called cookie butter), different kinds of gourmet type noodles, sundried tomatoes, and chia seeds, etc.  There's a lot of really healthy stuff at reasonable budget prices.  Heck, you can try something you've never had at Trader Joe's and if you don't like it for any reason, they'll take it back and refund you.  Why not try something new?

And here's another big reason I like to shop here--taste.  The stuff I buy at Trader Joe's almost always tastes better than similar products I buy at the grocery store.  I can pay the same amount for TJ's wheat crackers as I can on Meijer brand wheat crackers.  And I think TJ's taste better!

It's a little bit further for me to travel to Trader Joe's but I think I might try to do it more often out of principal of price and taste.

Wondering where some of Trader Joe's products come from?  Check out the following article: http://www.chow.com/food-news/64791/trader-joe-s-exposed/