Episode 104: Inside Trader Joe's Goes Back to the Future
Inside Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's
4.8 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One-hundred-and-sixty-two years ago, we started a podcast. Well, actually, it wasn't quite that long ago. We started Inside Trader Joe's in 2018, thinking it would be a five-episode opportunity for us to tell our story from our point of view. And now here we are, eight years and more than 100 episodes later. Our crystal ball did not reveal this future, and yet, as we look back on those original episodes – the First Five, if you will – we're struck by how much remains the same. We're still all about the products, our Values still guide us, we're definitely dedicated to not taking ourselves too seriously, the store is still most definitely our brand, and we take great pride in being good neighbors, in every neighborhood Trader Joe's. Take a little walk down memory lane with us as we revisit the First Five. And keep listening for more – just like you'll always find new products in your neighborhood store, we always have more stories to tell!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Here's a taste of what's coming up on Inside Trader Joe's. |
| 0:04.0 | Why do you shop at Trader Joe's? |
| 0:06.0 | Because you have the most variety. |
| 0:08.0 | I actually remember you guys when you guys just had like nuts and cheeses. |
| 0:12.0 | We actually sold sandwiches by the inch, and I always wondered, like, did someone say, like, give me an inch long ham on rye? |
| 0:19.0 | There really are hundreds of thousands of wines available in the market. |
| 0:22.8 | We carry about 500 in our stores. |
| 0:25.4 | So we're tasting every day, literally every day. |
| 0:29.4 | There are people who work here at Trader Joe's, whose job is to go out into the universe |
| 0:34.5 | and find the foods we don't know we need. |
| 0:37.0 | I will cop to having eaten some biscuits intended for animals other than humans recently, |
| 0:42.3 | but I can say with conviction we taste everything. |
| 0:45.3 | Yeah, tasting panels meeting right now, so follow me. |
| 0:49.3 | I'm a marketing person, you guys are marketing people, so innovative, interesting, engaging. And in hindsight, we probably |
| 0:56.4 | should have known that some of those products were going to be misses. Like what? We thought chunk |
| 1:01.8 | pilchered in the can would be great. You know, we're in the people business. We sell groceries, |
| 1:06.0 | but we're in the people business. We'll even hear from Joe himself. The demographics were changing in the United |
| 1:11.7 | States, and I thought that these people would want something different. Why is everybody so |
| 1:17.9 | nice? It's like, because they are. Because they are. |
| 1:21.0 | And smile, smile, smile they're not by. And that's how this podcast, Trader Joe's began back in 2018. |
| 1:33.7 | It's been all downhill since. |
| 1:35.7 | We thought we were only going to do five episodes and be done. |
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