Trader Joe’s stores aren’t popping up anywhere.
In one episode Inside Trader Joe’s podcast, hosts Tara Miller and Matt Sloan go into detail about the method of deciding where to open new locations. “First and foremost, we’re looking at where people are,” Sloan said. “More typical is better. So densely populated.”
“It might be an area that doesn’t have a Trader Joe’s store right now,” he added. But they don’t completely rule out places with one. “It could be an area that’s really densely populated and the traffic patterns are such that the drive from one Trader Joe’s to another neighborhood — it might be close, but it could take a really long time — could be interesting,” he said.
Miller addresses another important feature of a good place: parking. “I know people think we don’t care about parking. We care about parking. We want to make sure that we put stores in places where it is relatively easy to get in and out of the mall or just in a separate parking lot. There will be a lot of traffic coming into that place,” she said.
Trader Joe’s parking lot.
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
For as many things as the merchant looks at forthere are as many things as they avoid. “We’re not interested in growing by just buying another chain and putting a different sign on the building,” Sloan said.
They are currently looking at over 1,000 potential locations in 48 US states. (“Apologies to Alaska and Hawaii,” Sloan said). They already have almost 600 stores.
Unfortunately, customer pleas do not help them choose the latest sales location.
“People are so excited about the prospect of one of our stores coming to their neighborhood that they’ve started a social media campaign or they’ve started a letter writing campaign,” Miller said. Sloan then broke the bad news: “While we love the energy and enthusiasm that is often expressed in any of these various social media campaigns…they don’t really have much, if any, influence on what we end up deciding.”
“Our decisions, they’re business decisions,” Miller continued. “We’re excited when people are excited about us, but that’s not really what drives the decisions about what Trader Joe’s brings.”
Ultimately, it comes down to “access and ease of ingress and egress, and traffic flow,” Sloan said.
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The podcast co-hosts shared other behind-the-scenes details about the fan-favorite grocery store, such as when they explained why employees ring the bell.
The single, double and triple tolls were created with a “maritime aspect” in mind, as crews on ships would use the bell to send out “signals and communication,” the pair described in the August episode.
“One bell means you need another cashier. Two bells means you need someone to find the item. And three means you need a manager,” Miller said.
“And we’ve been holding on to it for decades,” Sloan said. “The bell was cheaper than the public address system, and I think they sound a little more interesting.”
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Source: HIS Education