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.
Comment [1]
The Food Supply Chain
a pictorial representation to ponder
Posted Jun 26, 01:14 PM in biology, business, business models, consumerism, economics, environment, marketing, operations management, pictures, politics, semiotics, sustainability
(click for a more detailed view)
On Thinking Clearly
How we conflate symbols with reality
Posted Jun 9, 03:48 PM in business, consumerism, economics, environment, marketing, politics, semiotics, sustainability
A while back, I worked on a project for a company that had a large fleet of gas-powered vehicles. This company had a certain budget, and wanted to use this money to retire as much as they could of their current fleet, and replace the vehicles with hybrids. In their own words, the goal of the project was to “reduce [the company’s] carbon footprint.” As my colleagues and I investigated the feasibility of their proposal, we found that the company’s allocated budget could buy many more diesel vehicles than hybrid vehicles. Diesel vehicles are an established technology with widespread availability, a large number of mechanics, a high level of reliability, any many competing engine manufacturers to choose from. The same cannot be said of hybrids. As such, the company could buy and maintain 3 or 4 diesel vehicles for the price of one hybrid.1 Taking that into account, the total environmental impact after a year would be much, much lower with the diesels than with the hybrids! We happily reported these results to the company, expecting them to be excited about how massive a dent our plan would put in their carbon footprint.
They were not pleased.
It was only then that it hit me; I had naively assumed that the company’s goal really was to reduce its carbon footprint. In fact, their real purpose was to employ a flashy PR campaign that gave consumers the impression that their company was a bastion of environmental stewardship and was making big strides in upholding the tenets of corporate social responsibility (or the vague understanding of which espoused by the public) by buying impressive hybrid vehicles, the symbol of environmental consciousness! Wouldn’t the public be impressed?
The company really wanted to buy those hybrid vehicles. They wanted to look like the good guys in front of their competitors. Our proposal far surpassed their expectations, if one considers the goal that they claimed they had. But we failed miserably if one considered what their real, unstated goals were.
It is disappointing that the company felt like the best way to convey their apparent concern for the environment was to do something that carried all the signs of the environmental movement but not the weight of it. But I don’t blame the company. I blame consumers and the public in general for lazily ascribing meaning to symbols without understanding their impacts on a macro level.
Which brings me to my next point: one of the biggest social ills observable in the United States is the demand for benefit without the willingness for sacrifice. People talk strongly about the need for environmental preservation, conservation, and consciousness, but I rarely see anyone willing to incur the personal discomfort needed to effect any change. Many good people who are strident environmentalists (at least in the public sphere) don’t make any particular efforts to drive less, turn off their lights when not at home, or reduce their consumption behavior.
Many of the environmentally-directed actions of such people’s efforts can be found in the fact that they buy organic food, drive small cars, and purchase recycled toilet paper. I call these people “soy candle environmentalists.” Despite this disparaging-sounding epithet, I do not mean to judge them as bad people by any means. However, I do see them as a product of a society that has learned that the best way to demonstrate their commitment to a particular cause is through highly commoditized consumer behavior. I buy soy candles. I drive a hybrid car. I buy recycled products.
This is not to suggest that the above are empty gestures that don’t have any value in the real world. They do have value. However, they do not really address the root of our environmental problems—overconsumption— in any deep way. They are basically means of mitigating some of the damages caused by their consumption habits, and in ways that are visible to outsiders. It’s not good enough to be an environmentalist; we want to be seen as being one. And if we had to choose one or the other, most of us would probably choose the latter, because the social shame associated with being an unsophisticated, environmentally ignorant consumer is a pain that is both closer and more ego-damaging than blindly shipping off hundreds of non-recycleable styrofoam cups to some distant landfill.
A recent event I witnessed illustrated jut how fixated we are on the socially accepted symbols of environmental consciousness rather than the results of one’s actions. My friend had an old beat-up station wagon that died on him recently. There was an unused SUV in the family that was kindly passed down to him so that he’d have a vehicle again without having to go through the enormous expense of buying a new one. He and his girlfriend are both pretty staunch liberals, so naturally, he was rather sheepish and apologetic to his equally liberal friends who saw that his station wagon had been replaced by this new, “politically incorrect” vehicle. When I saw the SUV, I didn’t comment on it or pass any judgment on him, but he still expressed some level of shame about having it. I explained to him that there shouldn’t be any shame in having an SUV. It’s just that this vehicle has become a symbol of American excess; it is not necessarily the equivalent of that excess. Aside from the additional resources needed to produce the vehicle itself, it’s only as bad as its driver makes it.
I’d rather most of the country have huge SUVs that they use infrequently and for local outings than have a nation of small car owners making daily 50 mile commutes. The latter is what I saw in ridiculous quantities the Bay Area, where SUVs are reviled. In San Francisco, SUV owners are vilified, and their cars vandalized and defiled; but I have never heard about any of the people I knew who spent 2+ hours driving one-way to work in their economy-sized cars being harassed. Why? It’s much easier to latch onto the symbol than it is to latch onto someone’s actual impact. It’s much easier and more comfortable for environmentally-conscious people to simply blame the SUV for all the environmental ills than for them to question their own consumption habits; it allows for a convenient “us and them” scenario, a division that forms the backbone of all our socio-political conflicts. It’s really no different than pointing the finger at Jews or blacks or immigrants for America’s problems instead of us figuring out what our problems actually are, and what their root causes are. And it feels much better to pin the downfall of society on “them” than it is for you to be introspective and figure out how you yourself (as an individual or part of a collective) are the source of most of your problems!
In the case of the SUV, it’s as if one’s actual impact on the environment (given our choice of vehicle) is given a back seat to what our apparent attitude is, the attitude that spectators might ascribe to us if they were paying attention to all the pro-environmental symbols and signals that we cloak ourselves in, instead of examining our lifestyle as a whole. As such, there’s cachet in being seen driving the latest hybrid (no matter how much you drive), and there’s shame in driving an SUV (no matter how little you drive).
Often, these symbols, like the aforementioned soy candles mislead us into thinking that we are actually taking serious steps in curbing our own environmental footprint on this planet. Recycling is another example. This act has become the poster child for environmental advocacy, and I’ve heard otherwise intelligent people argue that we can save the world if we simply recycle our paper, plastic, and soda cans.
Not even close.
Many people do not realize the amount of resources that need to be dedicated to recycling, and think of recycling as a simple equation for saving resources. You can recycle all the paper you want, but for every sheet you use that you didn’t really need to use, you have created immense pollution, having used tremendous energy in bleaching it, pulping it, and reforming it into recycled paper. This is basically true for every type of material recycling.
In fact, the assertion that recycling is a panacea for our environmental issues is so untrue that many of those working closest with recycling efforts will quietly admit that recycling is quite possibly more damaging than it is helpful; their reluctance to broadcast this comes from the fact that they hope to keep environmental consciousness on the minds of people, and hope that increased awareness will play some role in reducing environmental impact on the earth eventually.
But there is a serious danger in promoting recycling, one that few think about: does the ever-present specter of recycling as a de facto absolver of environmental consequence enable or even encourage wasteful behavior? That is, will people be unnecessarily wasteful or use more than they might otherwise simply because they feel that the normal environmental damage that they may be causing will be offset by the fact that they are planning to recycle?
I would argue that, yes, this is a real and observable phenomenon. And it’s one that is most notable in those who are most aware of and personally conscious of environmental issues. I have personally witnessed reams of paper being unnecessarily used in the most thoughtless of ways while the standard “don’t worry, we’ll recycle it” line is tossed off in casual manners, signifying of course, that this wastage isn’t really wastage, and that the paper is not going directly back into the waste stream. Perhaps it is literally true that this paper won’t re-enter the waste stream, but it doesn’t mean that there’s no environmental cost to it. Energy-production facilities are burning coal needed to process that paper back into a usable consumer product; bleach is being pumping to the world’s water sources to render the paper white; and trucks are pumping out millions of tons of carbon dioxide getting the paper to and from the processing facility.
You can buy as many soy candles, hemp shirts, and organic fruits you can find, but don’t expect this to translate into strong environmental impacts. Sure, it’s possible that your impact is slightly smaller than it would be if you bought traditional candles (made from petroleum distillates), cotton clothing (which uses a large amount of water and pesticides), and non-organic fruits, but ultimately, these are efforts that these are minor shifts towards environmental stewardship. Real efforts in environmental stewardship come from buying less and using less, not buying into the symbols of change. But our system is so structured around commerce that it is hard for consumers and companies to understand the divergence between the symbols and the impacts those symbols are supposed to represent.
FOOTNOTE:
1. Seth Godin just posted an article that essentially says the exact same thing.
