Cut-rate gourmet store Trader Joe's draws devotees

Larry Bleiberg

The Dallas Morning News



SANTA FE, N.M. - It looked like a lot of luggage for a weekend trip: Three suitcases and two big boxes. But it was easy carrying them to the airline counter. Most were empty.



I was taking them to New Mexico to fill them up.



Two days later, when I checked in at the Albuquerque airport for the flight home, they were stuffed. I had boxes packed with wine, Thai-spiced peanuts, cans of corn chowder, organic dog biscuits, hand lotion, dried gooseberries and much more.

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Yes, I know we have grocery stores in Dallas. But we don't have a Trader Joe's.



For those who don't know the store, my behavior seems bizarre. For those who do, it's perfectly understandable.



Trader Joe's has that effect on people.



When the chain opened its first Manhattan branch in March, the news made The New York Times. The specialty grocery store sells gourmet products at a discount. Think of it as Central Market at Wal-Mart prices.



The chain started in Southern California, conquered the West Coast, and moved to the east about a decade ago. Slowly now, it's closing in on Texas. The nearest stores to Dallas are in the St. Louis area. Santa Fe got one three years ago, Albuquerque this spring. This autumn, Atlanta will fall.



The store has an unofficial Web site started by fans (TrackingTraderJoes.com). Shoppers trade tips and rumors on Internet discussion boards. Communities have started mailing campaigns urging the chain to come to town. Trader Joe's doesn't sell on the Internet.



For certain travelers, every trip that includes a Trader Joe's city requires finding time for a quick visit and, of course, leaving extra room in the suitcase. Because, as I soon saw, I'm not the only one to haul jars of organic peanut butter across state lines.



(My trip was before the new airline carry-on restrictions, but there's nothing that would keep a traveler from making a similar haul today. Travelers can still check luggage with liquids, spreads and other items banned from carry-on bags.)



Or you can drive.



"We have an RV, so we're filling up the freezer," said Lisa Mackey, who was taking home about $300 worth of groceries from the Santa Fe Trader Joe's to her home in Durango, Colo. While she stood near bags of frozen Peruvian chimichurri rice, her husband explained that they figured the money they were saving on fish alone would pay for their gas.



Flash-frozen tuna fillets go for $4.99 a pound at Trader Joe's, about a third of the Colorado price. And they're much tastier, the couple said. This was their second visit to the store. They had come by the day before to pick up deodorant, pesto, capers and simmer sauces.



For those of us without RVs, the choices narrow just a bit.



As hard as it was to bypass the gelato, the Greek-chicken pizza and the frozen cubes of fresh basil, my wife and I stuck to nonperishables as we cruised the store.



Chocolate-coated dried fruit, lavender dryer sheets, cranberry apple chutney. Our cart was filling up.



Trader Joe's was started in California in 1967 by Joe Coulombe. His niche, gourmet food on a miser's budget, appealed to well-traveled shoppers seeking cuisine they had tried on their trips. He figured his customers would be overeducated and underpaid.



From the beginning, the chain took pride in its lack of pretension. Stores are generally in out-of-the-way shopping centers where rent is cheap. They're also smaller than a typical grocery store, rarely topping 15,000 square feet. And most items are private-label. Some are branded Trader Joe's, although Italian goods are called Trader Giotto; Mexican foods, Trader Jose's; and Asian products, Trader Ming.



Trader Joe's is now owned by the low-cost German grocery chain Aldi. Coulombe, no longer with the firm, now serves on the board of Cost Plus World Markets.



But Trader Joe's sense of fun hasn't changed.



The company uniform is Hawaiian shirts. In the cookie section, you can find a box labeled A Fig Walks Into a Bar. In the household goods aisle, there's Next to Godliness hand soap. Food samples abound. Staffers are authorized to open goods for customers to taste.



Santa Fe store manager Darren Haines said out-of-town bulk shoppers are easy to spot. You see them pulling two grocery carts, overflowing with jars of Indian simmer sauces, bags of dried blueberries and wine. Lots of wine.



Trader Joe's made national news five years ago when it started selling Charles Shaw wine for $1.99 a bottle. The vintage, exclusive to Trader Joe's, wasn't bad, shoppers insisted. It soon became known as "Two-Buck Chuck."



At its height of popularity, Charles Shaw accounted for 20 percent of all the wine sold in California.



Now the price has skyrocketed to $2.99 a bottle. But Three-Buck Chuck still has its fans.



One woman lined up at the checkout stand with six cases she planned to drive back to Oklahoma. Betty, who refused to give her last name ("Bartlesville is a conservative town"), said the wine was pretty good.



"We like the cabernet," she said. "We're going to try a case of the shiraz this time, too."



Trader Joe's says it doesn't discuss expansion plans. The company has grown slowly but methodically over its history, paying for growth from earnings, not by borrowing.



John Hummel of McKinney, Texas, gets his Trader Joe's fix every time he visits his parents in Tucson.



"One time I even brought a mostly empty suitcase so I would have plenty of room to haul back my stash," he said. "I love their coffees, Hawaiian-style potato chips, their spreads and sauces, the dried fruit and their trail mix."



Store employees understand.



Diane Coleman said that before Trader Joe's opened in Santa Fe, she used to bring groceries back to New Mexico after visiting family in California. "I would drag everything I could on an airplane. I would carry baby artichokes home on my lap."



On the way back to the airport for our return flight, my wife and I decided to detour to the Albuquerque store. It was past lunchtime, and we all know it's never wise to shop hungry. Trader Joe's has packaged takeout, so we did the only rational thing.



We selected boxes of Thai-spiced chicken pasta and Southwestern beans and corn salad, plus containers of flavored Greek-style yogurt (fig and honey). Then we perched on the store's curb for a snack.



We could survey the parking lot where our rental car was now loaded with 105 pounds of groceries, distributed in boxes, suitcases and computer bags.



We still had a few minutes to kill. I suggested we go back in for one last look.



A few minutes later, we emerged with a bottle of Coastal cabernet and some pomegranate-blueberry juice.



There was, I just knew, a little more room in the red suitcase.