Anytime you go to Trader Joe’s, you can count on filling your cart with beloved favorite items, as well as finding new products they’ve just gotten in. But it turns out, there are some things we’ll never see at TJ’s.
On the latest episode of the “Insider Trader Joe’s” podcast, a pair of Trader Joe’s execs - CEO Bryan Palbaum and president and Vice CEO Jon Basalone - address some rumors going around about the grocery store chain. Here’s what shoppers can expect, according to the top bosses.
- No self-checkout - Stores across the country are doing it, including Whole Foods and Publix, but you won’t be bagging your own groceries at Trader Joe’s. “Self-checkout rumors are false, as false as false can be, because we believe in people and we’re not trying to get rid of our crew members for efficiency’s sake,” Basalone says.
- No drive-thru - There have been whispers that this could be in TJ’s future, but it’s just not true. Both Basalone and Palbaum confirm no drive-thru Trader Joe’s stores are happening and Palbaum took the chance to poke fun at the chain’s notoriously small and congested parking lots, joking, “There’s probably plenty of room in our parking lots for a drive-thru.”
- No in-store restaurants - Some big grocery stores have food courts or in-store restaurants, like Wegmans, but they’re not coming to a TJ’s near you. If you need a snack to sustain you while you shop, you can always grab a free sample or ask an employee to open any product for you to taste test.
- No purposefully flirty employees - On Reddit and TikTok, plenty of Trader Joe’s shoppers swear that staff members are told to flirt with customers on purpose, but the execs say that’s “definitively” not the case. “I think we just have such a unique environment in our stores that, to go into a Trader Joe's store and feel that everyone is genuinely interested in whether or not you are having a good day, compared to maybe perhaps other retailers,” Palbaum explains. “I could see how that might be misinterpreted.” Basalone points out, “That’s just what niceness feels like.”
Source: Real Simple
Photo: Getty Images