A sampling of great things from trader joes:

canned corn. amazingly crisp and sweet and not canny at all.
almond milk. they just added this and I like it more than almond breeze brand.
roasted pepper and corn soup. I sometimes add grilled chicken and hot peppers, but good straight.
satay noodles. I miss these since I stopped eating gluten.
marinara. the regular one, tall jar.
caramelized onion dip. great on carrots ,cucumbers, and grilled steak tips (happy accident.)
hummus. all kinds.

Love Trader Joe's.

Sad that there's not one in my area.

The wife braved the crowds this weekend. She loves the place.

Trader Joe's is awesome. Think of it as a small, hippie Whole Foods with better prices. (Or, if you have a cheapskate Aldi's around, think of it as Aldi's crossed with Whole Foods.) They have some truly unique products that are hard to find (if not impossible) elsewhere.

I love TJ's and shop there all the time.

And apparently they have some decent tasting wines at very chep prices.

The Chocolate Croissants are amazing. They are in the frozen breakfast area.

Sounds like a "hipster" place.

Yea, thats kind of the vibe im getting. I dont think im enough of a food connoisseur to appreciate a place like this.

Ill stick to the regular grocery stores and name brand stuff.

Not really. Granted, there are a fair share of hipsters who shop there, but they are certainly a minority.

When I chose to go back to school full-time 3 years ago, I started working at one of the locations here in St. Louis. Flexible hours and great benefits made it the perfect job for me. I totally had my preconceptions blown out of the water as I had a similar opinion to the one above. Sadly, my tenure there has come to an end as I've graduated.

What it boils down to is this: if you like healthy foods (no artificial preservatives, no GMO's, etc.) at a cheap price (more often than not they are cheaper than your neighborhood grocery store), then it is a great place to shop. Best frozen foods and best valued wine, bar none.

BTW, many of the TJ label products are really major label products that have been reformulated to meet the TJ standards.

Actually, a lot of them are name brands, but they package them as house brands so people don't say "why would I buy XXX at the grocery store when TJs has it $.50 cheaper."

I, and my family [who went there gleefully, Sunday], are totally in the cult of Trader Joes. I don't buy everything there [I still prefer cheap produce to expensive 'hippy' produce, same with dairy and eggs], but their meat, frozen and especially 'trail mix' aisles are de rigeur.

If a hipster and Sam's Club 'did it.'

it's actually owned by the guy who owns Aldi's.

Take a lot of Sam's Club's foodstuffs and package them individually, and you have a good bit of Trader Joes.

Ive never been but the idea is a cool one.


Id love to go someplace and trade stuff to get stuff. I have stuff they may want to trade me for.

The private label business model is growing rapidly. Aldi was the first to do it exclusively and they continued the idea with Trader Joe's.

There used to be a website that listed what foods at Aldi were made by whom. It was a Kosher site for those who needed to know what was edible. Some well-known names that I remember were Sargento for most of their cheese, Tyson for chicken, spin-off of Prego for spaghetti sauce and cereals made by Quaker and Malt-O-Meal. I'm sure things change, but most of their food comes from well-known sources.

When I worked in food production during HS and college we did some private label packaging. It was exactly the same as the name brand product, it just came in a store-labeled carton.