Trader Joe’s enchanted aisles cant to the left, in a chevron pattern:
(Americans, it turns out, move counterclockwise through grocery stores: Our first bias upon walking through the automatic glass doors is to avoid going left, maybe because we shop as we drive, on the right.) The offbeat floor arrangement complements Trader Joe’s unregimented persona: “Hey, we just threw up some shelves, and there they are.” It’s also a retail trick. Angled passageways reveal a store’s contents in profile to arriving shoppers. Rows squared with the walls (see: any supermarket) inadvertently conceal their contents from customers peering into a corridor’s mouth looking for the toothbrush display. At Trader Joe’s, chevroning opens space necessary for the stores’ midsize liquor and produce sections. A fruit and vegetable section running the length of a store, common at Ralphs, is beyond Trader Joe’s needs; the company refuses to move into the perishable fresh produce format, preferring the shelf time and savings that plastic-wrapped organic broccoli crowns offer.
Because Trader Joe’s designs its own packaging, the company can coordinate its aisles into aesthetically pleasing color fields. Walk into a Ralphs or a Pavilions and examine the shelves. Morton Salt blue clashes with La Victoria green clashes with C&H beige clashes with Prego black. It’s a mess. But Trader Joe’s has a unified palette: The ice creams match, the pizzas blend with the masalas, the soups with the stocks. Not that every Trader Joe’s product carries the company’s logo — a branding tool originally thought up by Coulombe. There’s Tom’s of Maine toothpaste, Balance bars, and all that liquor — 20 percent of the stock is estimated to carry another company’s label. But the Sweet Potato Frites, the Brownie Truffle Baking Mix, the Fully Cooked Seasoned Pork Roast with Barbecue Sauce, and the Candy Cane Joe-Joe’s? All are made by businesses that have sealed a relationship with Trader Joe’s. Typically such a pact arrives after one of Trader Joe’s four top buyers — who are said to circle the globe like Predator drones seeking fresh product — lock in on a provider. (Alternately companies pitch Trader Joe’s “category” buyers over the phone.) Often Trader Joe’s chooses regional companies for the price break. The European Style Organic Yogurt found at the Arroyo Parkway store is not cultured by the same dairy that supplies the 14th Street outpost in the East Village — Trader Joe’s would lose money refrigerating and shipping yogurt cross-country. Since those dairies also don’t need to fret over shelling out cash on advertising or supermarket slotting fees, they can offer yogurt to Trader Joe’s at a discount.
The secretive company won’t reveal who makes their products, but inquiring minds want to know:
Trader Joe’s Soyaki sauce is Soy Vay Veri Veri Sauce that has been relabeled; the Vienna Style Lager is Gordon Biersch in a different bottle; the Organic Tofu Veggie Burgers are Wildwood SprouTofu Veggie Burgers in disguise; and This Strawberry Walks into a Bar breakfast bars are really Full Circle Strawberry & Fruit Cereal Bars slumming as tarts in drag. (The coffee you drink them with is probably roasted at the Mountanos Brothers plant in San Francisco.)
We go through their Soy-Vay sauce in 55-gallon drum quantities.