ICYMI: How Do Trader Joe's Products Get Their Names

Inside Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's

Arts, Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Food

4.7 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We get a lot of questions at Trader Joe's. And we really love answering them. One question we get all the time is about our product names. Why are some of them just descriptive (say, Cauliflower Gnocchi) while others are decidedly silly (This Strawberry Walks Into a Bar, anyone?)? Every Trader Joe's product has a story to tell – sometimes that story is really straightforward, and sometimes it's silly and whimsical and fun. In the spirit of making grocery shopping a fun and exciting adventure rather than a mundane chore, we're always looking for the silly, the whimsical, and the fun. Have a listen, then head to your neighborhood Trader Joe's to find your favorite. (Midnight Moo, perhaps?)

Transcript (PDF)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
0:04.2	Romeo and Juliet, act two, scene two.
0:06.6	You looked that up.
0:07.8	Maybe.
0:08.4	But would a Trader Joe's product by any other name taste as sweet?
0:12.7	Ah, yes.
0:13.6	To be or not to be a topic for a podcast episode.
0:17.6	That is the question.
0:19.1	Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. And yes, let's make this an I-C-Y-M-I, in case you missed it,
0:25.9	episode of Inside Trader Joe's.
0:34.5	I-C-Y-M-I, how does Trader Joe's name its products?
0:39.3	And do product names matter? Very carefully and yes.
0:41.3	Some things at Trader Joe's have names that just sound like what they are.
0:46.3	So...
0:47.3	Very descriptive.
0:48.3	Things like cauliflower and yoke.
0:50.3	That tells you it's a little pillow pasta type thing, but it's made with cauliflower. Very
0:55.9	straightforward. Sometimes we go a little fanciful, we go a little whimsical, like hold the cone
1:01.6	ice cream cones. It tells you what it is, but it also it's like hold the cone, why is it called
1:05.3	that? We take the whole process of naming our products pretty seriously and oftentimes going
1:10.7	really straightforward makes the
1:12.2	most sense mandarin orange chicken for example you know what's in that bag we did that with something else
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Trader Joe's, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Trader Joe's and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.