The Pleasant Green Illusion of Trader Joe's
Why one of America’s fastest growing stores is not quite what it appears
Posted Sep 2, 03:44 PM in branding, business, business models, consumerism, marketing, postmodernism, semiotics
I recently moved to Madison, WI, and found that my new apartment is just blocks away from the perennial grocery store of choice of the archetypal liberal, Trader Joe’s. Don’t get me wrong, I love Trader Joe’s. They have a somewhat interesting— if a bit odd— selection of food, low prices on alternative-lifestyle staples like Morningstar Farms Vegetarian Meats, Hummus, and Dr. Bronner’s Soap, and the staff usually seem engaged and friendly in a way that you rarely see in the bigger chains.
Yet despite these virtues, there’s always been something that I’ve found very curious and fascinating about the store given its primary clientele: they package the hell out of everything. I’m talking about putting often unnecessary plastic bags around nearly all their produce (which is, incidentally, prepackaged and shipped from afar), hard plastic shells around fruits and tomatoes, and things like individually wrapped biscottis inside paper bags of biscotti.
The produce sections of standard grocery stores like Kroger and Safeway aren’t much better, but you can tell that there’s a lot less waste going on, on the whole. You can buy fruits and vegetables without using a plastic bag at all, but if you choose to use one, very thin plastic bags on a roll are offered. You can stuff your plastic bag with as much salad mix as you want. The bags at Trader Joe’s are much thicker, presumably so that they can ship without incurring damage to the contents of the bag, but they are sealed so that if you want 10oz of salad mix, you’ll be forced to buy two packages of the stuff.
Now, the interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that if you talk to people about Trader Joe’s, you will see that many if not most of its clientele view the store as being ‘environmentally sound’, espousing the values prioritized by the politically and environmentally progressive consumer, words like: organic, sustainable, socially-conscious, green, fair-trade, healthy, whole-grain, eco-friendly, and so on.
Strangely, as the store is able to capitalize on those concepts, there is little in the direct customer experience that should really suggest any of those things any more than any other grocery store. Not all of Trader Joe’s produce is organic or whole-grain, not all of their coffee is fair-trade, and not all of their eggs and meat are cage-free or free-range. Few customers know anything about what Trader Joe’s has to say about labor rights, politics, or environmental issues, but if you asked, I would bet they’d place them in the top 20% of American companies in all these categories. And yeah, they sell canvas bags, but they still bag your groceries by default in paper bags.
Both Kroger and Safeway both have sections dedicated to organic and whole-grain foods. Both also sell fair-trade coffee and free-range eggs and meat.
So what exactly is going on here? Why does Trader Joe’s get a free pass on environmental concerns and get to capitalize on all the standard jargon of the socially-minded left while the other guys are left to be viewed as the mainstream guys who don’t really give a shit about anything but profits?
Part of it, I think, is that Trader Joe’s is a much smaller store than Kroger and Safeway. It’s a mere fraction of the size by volume, but they carry a similar variety of foods but certainly not the diversity of brands. And for that matter, many of the brands they do carry are not to be found in other grocery stores. They don’t, for example, carry Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Tropicana Orange Juice. Sometimes such products are on their own private label brand (whose name changes depending on what product it is; their Mexican products are stamped with “Trader Jose” and Italian products have the ridiculous name “Trader Giotto’s” on them). They also carry an unusually large percentage of imported or apparently exotic goods. These don’t by themselves convey the aforementioned concepts, but these features do set them apart in the minds of the consumers, which is important.
Another part of it, while subtle, is the décor. Contrast the feeling you get while walking in the close, friendly quarters of the Trader Joe’s store with one you get when walking the cold, labyrinthine halls of Kroger. Contrast the warm wood paneling and comparatively low ceilings of Trader Joe’s with the stony white floors and high ceilings of Safeway. Notice the prevalence of baskets in the Trader Joe’s store, and the gargantuan supermarket carts elsewhere.
Also, and this is important, notice the clientele. There is a very obvious difference in who the typical shopper in each of these stores is. It’s impossible to tell without some form of surveying, but I would be extremely surprised if the average Trader Joe’s shopper wasn’t more educated, of a higher socio-economic status, with a higher disposable income, and a more liberal bent. But is it the store’s ostensibly progressive values that attracts this clientele, or does the store get its progressive image from the people who shop there? Certainly, there’s a feedback loop happening here, but it’s also true that there wouldn’t be such an attraction to these sorts of people without some compelling cause.
One possible cause could be that progressives are attracted to each other and teem into places where there are people like themselves, even in the absence of any gastronomical pretense. Possible, but I don’t find it very likely to be the root cause in the case of Trader Joe’s; after all, why would this trend begin in the first place? A more convincing reason for the progressive psychographic’s descent onto this store is its decidedly eclectic selection of food, where exotic foods like shitake mushrooms and shelled edamame are placed fashionably next to staples like baby carrots, and exotic Hollandic stroopwaffels oh-so-nonchalantly next to chocolate chip cookies. This post-modern melting pot of food is likely the central point of resonance at Trader Joe’s. After all, if we are to cull the messages from all the progressive radio stations, left-wing talking points, bumper stickers, and Bay Area street fairs, it is this very quality of “diversity” that presents itself as some kind guiding principle of progressive thought and which shapes the idealistic visions of progressive society. It is in this world that “diversity” in itself is considered a virtue, even in the absence of any dialectic.
Of course, diversity of foodstuffs is one thing, but where does the image of social consciousness come from? The household cleaners aisle, which is right next to where you’d buy “natural” toothpaste (do Poloxamer 335 and Propylene Glycol really count as natural?), doesn’t feature the usual allotment of chemicals like Ajax and Windex, but instead has products like all-purpose ‘natural’ orange cleaner made from degreasing compounds apparently found in citrus fruits, and mouthwashes with tell-tale signs of products that are trying to market themselves as ‘natural,’ muted brownish packages.
And speaking of muted packaging, it just might be that as a whole, Trader Joe’s packaging is of a more muted health-food store color than their mainstream rivals. With the notable exception of the produce section where colors like brown and white are not typically indicators of quality, the remainder of the store makes use of these earth tones in a manner not consistent of mainstream stores, where bright colors and fluorescence are used in packaging the same way that circus carnies shout and prod passers-by with their staccato brayings.
Trader Joe’s expertly weaves a tapestry that references all the signals that progressives look for and can relate to in their political identity, but much of the “follow-through” is only implied. But the store has called out so many of these reference points, that it creates the illusion that it’s all there—an illusion that many of the store’s patrons seem to appreciate as much as if it really were.
UPDATE (11/12/08):
I had an interesting encounter the other day as I was shopping in Trader Joe’s. In the seafood section, my girlfriend and I noticed that they were selling orange roughy. This particular fish is one that is listed as endangered, as it takes nearly 30 years for it to reach maturity— far longer than most commercial fish— and it has a long lifespan as well, often living up to 150 years. With the U.S. fishing industry hauling in about 19 million tons of the fish a year, and many of those fish being more than a hundred years old, it is not an exaggeration to say that this fish may be extinct within our lifetime.
Regardless, we were perturbed by the presence of this fish at this ostensibly progressive grocery store, and decided to talk to the management about why they are selling this endangered fish— at $6.99 a pound, no less. The manager was quite up front about it. “We don’t consider ourselves a ‘green’ company,” he said, obviously a little tired of once again having to answer to the legions of progressives that shop at Trader Joe’s, and explain why they stock items perceived as being unsustainable or hostile to liberal consumption ideologies. He continued: “We let our customers vote with their dollars about what we put on our shelves, and though I understand your concerns, we sell a LOT of orange roughy.” He tilted his head towards the sky when he said ‘lot.’
So there’s the confirmation. The idea that Trader Joe’s is a somehow progressive or green company is a total myth created by the brand’s phenomenal marketing— which is largely based on word-of-mouth.
I also asked him about the excessive packaging, and it turns out this varies by region. Wisconsin has some kind of regional regulation that requires fruit to be sold by the piece by Trader Joe’s due to the type of store they are, so apparently even bananas have to be wrapped up for sale in packaging. In other states, like Illinois, they can sell them loose.
Also, as much as I love the freebies, the amount of waste generated by the free samples is staggering. (So many little plastic cups and paper plates!)
— me · Nov 12, 05:36 PM · #