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On a recent road trip that took me through Atlanta, Charlotte, and the Durham-Chapel Hill area, I noticed that every Trader Joe's I saw was within a block or two of Whole Foods. The one in Little Rock will also be just down the street from Whole Foods. Is that their strategy everywhere, to have their stores close to Whole Foods?
On a recent road trip that took me through Atlanta, Charlotte, and the Durham-Chapel Hill area, I noticed that every Trader Joe's I saw was within a block or two of Whole Foods. The one in Little Rock will also be just down the street from Whole Foods. Is that their strategy everywhere, to have their stores close to Whole Foods?
Economies of scale. Also, why spend big bucks on expensive market research when your competition can do all the homework for you and you reap the benefit! Works for fast food!
On a recent road trip that took me through Atlanta, Charlotte, and the Durham-Chapel Hill area, I noticed that every Trader Joe's I saw was within a block or two of Whole Foods. The one in Little Rock will also be just down the street from Whole Foods. Is that their strategy everywhere, to have their stores close to Whole Foods?
In my experience, they both do this. Hoboken has a TJ and WF is moving in across the street. I'm not positive, but I believe the Louisville TJ was there before the WF. The Lexington KY WF is opening up 2 miles south on basically the busiest thoroughfare in the city. There is also an Aldi between the two, which is TJ-affiliated. The WF in Playa Vista (Los Angeles) is just on the other side of a neighborhood that's long had a TJ (Westchester).
And these are just areas I'm so familiar with that I'd know which came first, so I'm sure this is repeated nationwide by both sides and we just aren't all familiar enough with knowing which came first.
Does anyone know why Trader Joes is so finicky to expand more?
I believe it's distribution/production related. Unlike many grocery chains, the TJ's model places a much heavier emphasis on its own store brands. While most of what TJ's sells wears a TJ's label, most of it is produced by contractors. So their network is pretty complex relative to the average grocery chain and expanding rapidly would literally be putting the cart before the horse. They can't keep up.
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