Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Trader Joe’s Two-Buck Chuck dazzles 14th Street – at $3 a bottle
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This is a kind of new phenomenon, not experienced since WWII – people standing in line for food. Whether it is genuine or generated by superb publicity geniuses, it is there – Trader Joe’s, a new food emporium on 14th Street, a few doors west of 3td Avenue, attracts long outside lines of shoppers at dinner and other high-traffic times.
It came to me first from my nearest and dearest, who would not stand in the heavy line of enthusiasts that wrapped around the block, or at least up to Union Square, much like rock concert attendees. Eventually I found a convenient morning to walk through the store, on my way to the Lexington Ave train, asking the dominies of the cult questions, although not getting good answers. I was sent to the Captain’s Desk, but the captain was elsewhere.
Sill interested, in the evening I tracked the man down in the store’s Wine Annex. “This may sound weird to you, but you have to call our national press representative in California, Alison, she will talk to you,” thus Mark Grumbach, the captain of the enterprise. Well, I am a community reporter, and full-rate California phone calls are outside my community-giving scheme, so you’ll get my unauthorized personal interpretation.
Trader Joe’s chain seems to have made a virtue of what poor people used to do, making it chic to buy private or house-brand discount food, ignoring the advertised varieties .For example, they have 60+ brands of cereals under $3 a box, a bold statement that reflects the up-pricing that all those companies whose names begin with General have put us through. Also, essential food items from other major suppliers who are willing to supply house brands at a fraction of the cost of advertised items. As for bargains, it was nice to buy Alaskan salmon for $6.99/lb. The firm has created ethnic brands as well, Trader Jose sells salsa. They offer items that are unique for this market, such as papadam (Indian bread) chips and freeze-dried pineapple. Organic merchandise signs abound in the store.
Hard up for information, I found asking questions in the elevators of my building very helpful. “It is like Whole Foods, only the prices are better,” “Cheerful, but not pushy, some unusual items, good pizza.” “ Makes the others sit up and take notice of the competition. The Food Emporium has opened a table area, clean but not quite the view as from Whole Foods.”
So where does this whole concept of discount food come from? I think that the pioneers were the Albrecht brothers, with Aldi, a private-brand company that has been successful in Europe since the 1940s, then moved into the US, around Chicago, and now we have their stores in the east. Aldi’s feature about 200+ essential foods, one private brand per item, all on plain-Jane open shelving, stacked in cartons, with plastic and paper bags for sale at checkout, and shopping carts loaned out on a 25 cent deposit, making the client return the cart to the rack. The women clerks work hard, restocking cartons, and rushing cans through the optical scanner, earning maybe time and a half as much as the checkout clerks in conventional supermarkets. The customer does the bag stuffing.
The American case-lot sale stores, such as Sam’s Club, Costco, and BJ’s, are somewhat different, offering low-price house brands as well as American- produced name brand food goods in case quantities, fish by the freezer-load, and vegetables to last the season, at discount prices, off the plain rack. It did not take long for a Trader Joe’s to emerge, a discounter with panache. So there we have the hybrid, a price cutter with some class.
Getting back to my provocative headline, in search of the captain I walked into the Wine Annex, to find strange brands of Merlot, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grouped by the price range, at $ 3.99, at 4.99 and so on. One group, by Charles Shaw of California, grabbed my attention, at $2.99. Talking to a nice young lady only a day on the job, not yet indoctrinated to the code, I finally elicited the information – it is truly the real thing, the famous Two-Buck Chuck, a wine that created a sensation when sold in California at $2, and a dollar more out-of-state. Now you too can throw a Two-Buck Chuck tasting party, first on your block, and fascinate your neighbors, at minimal cost.
Actually, Trader Joe is not an upstart company; it started in California in 1958, by a grocer, Joe Coulombo, who wanted to bring unusual items into his store. He named his manager the Captain, the clerks were Crew, and Hawaiian shirts were the standard work apparel. The stores grew to 250, in 19 states, mostly on the two coasts, and counting. The mission statement offers food “from the exotic to the basic.” It is a fun idea, and the variety is good for this food-rich neighborhood. And guess who owns the company now? The Albrecht brothers.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish our readers, belatedly, a happy Passover and an enjoyable Easter celebration
This is a kind of new phenomenon, not experienced since WWII – people standing in line for food. Whether it is genuine or generated by superb publicity geniuses, it is there – Trader Joe’s, a new food emporium on 14th Street, a few doors west of 3td Avenue, attracts long outside lines of shoppers at dinner and other high-traffic times.
It came to me first from my nearest and dearest, who would not stand in the heavy line of enthusiasts that wrapped around the block, or at least up to Union Square, much like rock concert attendees. Eventually I found a convenient morning to walk through the store, on my way to the Lexington Ave train, asking the dominies of the cult questions, although not getting good answers. I was sent to the Captain’s Desk, but the captain was elsewhere.
Sill interested, in the evening I tracked the man down in the store’s Wine Annex. “This may sound weird to you, but you have to call our national press representative in California, Alison, she will talk to you,” thus Mark Grumbach, the captain of the enterprise. Well, I am a community reporter, and full-rate California phone calls are outside my community-giving scheme, so you’ll get my unauthorized personal interpretation.
Trader Joe’s chain seems to have made a virtue of what poor people used to do, making it chic to buy private or house-brand discount food, ignoring the advertised varieties .For example, they have 60+ brands of cereals under $3 a box, a bold statement that reflects the up-pricing that all those companies whose names begin with General have put us through. Also, essential food items from other major suppliers who are willing to supply house brands at a fraction of the cost of advertised items. As for bargains, it was nice to buy Alaskan salmon for $6.99/lb. The firm has created ethnic brands as well, Trader Jose sells salsa. They offer items that are unique for this market, such as papadam (Indian bread) chips and freeze-dried pineapple. Organic merchandise signs abound in the store.
Hard up for information, I found asking questions in the elevators of my building very helpful. “It is like Whole Foods, only the prices are better,” “Cheerful, but not pushy, some unusual items, good pizza.” “ Makes the others sit up and take notice of the competition. The Food Emporium has opened a table area, clean but not quite the view as from Whole Foods.”
So where does this whole concept of discount food come from? I think that the pioneers were the Albrecht brothers, with Aldi, a private-brand company that has been successful in Europe since the 1940s, then moved into the US, around Chicago, and now we have their stores in the east. Aldi’s feature about 200+ essential foods, one private brand per item, all on plain-Jane open shelving, stacked in cartons, with plastic and paper bags for sale at checkout, and shopping carts loaned out on a 25 cent deposit, making the client return the cart to the rack. The women clerks work hard, restocking cartons, and rushing cans through the optical scanner, earning maybe time and a half as much as the checkout clerks in conventional supermarkets. The customer does the bag stuffing.
The American case-lot sale stores, such as Sam’s Club, Costco, and BJ’s, are somewhat different, offering low-price house brands as well as American- produced name brand food goods in case quantities, fish by the freezer-load, and vegetables to last the season, at discount prices, off the plain rack. It did not take long for a Trader Joe’s to emerge, a discounter with panache. So there we have the hybrid, a price cutter with some class.
Getting back to my provocative headline, in search of the captain I walked into the Wine Annex, to find strange brands of Merlot, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grouped by the price range, at $ 3.99, at 4.99 and so on. One group, by Charles Shaw of California, grabbed my attention, at $2.99. Talking to a nice young lady only a day on the job, not yet indoctrinated to the code, I finally elicited the information – it is truly the real thing, the famous Two-Buck Chuck, a wine that created a sensation when sold in California at $2, and a dollar more out-of-state. Now you too can throw a Two-Buck Chuck tasting party, first on your block, and fascinate your neighbors, at minimal cost.
Actually, Trader Joe is not an upstart company; it started in California in 1958, by a grocer, Joe Coulombo, who wanted to bring unusual items into his store. He named his manager the Captain, the clerks were Crew, and Hawaiian shirts were the standard work apparel. The stores grew to 250, in 19 states, mostly on the two coasts, and counting. The mission statement offers food “from the exotic to the basic.” It is a fun idea, and the variety is good for this food-rich neighborhood. And guess who owns the company now? The Albrecht brothers.
Wally Dobelis and the staff of T&V wish our readers, belatedly, a happy Passover and an enjoyable Easter celebration
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:44 PM 
