
Those Trader Joe's deliveries? Never mind - llambda
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130927/NEWS07/130929789/those-trader-joes-deliveries-never-mind
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drakaal
I don't want to trust a food supply chain that is crowd sourced.

I know I have the unpopular view that services that do ride sharing are scary,
as are many of the AirBNB's that are in random people's house.

And I know we don't do background checks on everyone who touches the
produce... But we do require vaccines for people who touch our food in most
places.

There isn't a nice way to say it, so I'll just say it. The Crowd that shops at
Trader Joe's, or work at a service that is crowd sourced is more likely to be
the crowd that doesn't get vaccinated.

Hepatitis being the most likely vector for something to go wrong which is why
so many places require employees to have the HAV Vaccine.

EDIT: The comment about Trader Joe's Stems from an interview which is
discussed here (making it easier to see the reference)
[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2008/12/29/pandagon-
anti_vaccinat...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2008/12/29/pandagon-
anti_vaccination_anti_feminist/)

Here is the interview: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/370/r...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/370/ruining-it-for-the-rest-of-us)

~~~
NathanKP
I don't see what your connection is between people shopping at Trader Joes and
people who don't get vaccinated.

I can understand being concerned about such "crowd services" (although I
personally use Airbnb and other such services regularly) but I don't see a
basis or reason for that particular association between people who shop at a
Trader Joes and people who don't get vaccinated.

~~~
endianswap
Not the parent, but I bet these findings line up well with Trader Joe's
demographics: [http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/demographics-
unvacci...](http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/demographics-unvaccinated-
children)

~~~
NathanKP
Interesting. However that link says only three in one thousand children were
completely unvaccinated. The percentage that were under vaccinated is larger
but still not that terrible. So even if the demographics of Trader Joe
shoppers and unvaccinated people had a 100% match that doesn't mean that
someone shopping at Trader Joes is likely to be unvaccinated. The percentage
of people who eschew all vaccinations is low enough that the percentage of the
unvaccinated shopping at Trader Joes is also likely to be very low.

~~~
drakaal
Hep A isn't a mandatory Vaccine in most places. So most people don't have it.
The types that shop at Trader Joe's tend to be the types that reject Adult
Vaccines because they think that like Hybrid Crops they are just something
cooked up by big companies to make money.

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mikeash
Are there, in fact, "types that shop at Trader Joe's" beyond people who live
near them, people who like saving money on the stuff that TJ's sells cheaply,
and people who like quality food?

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redblacktree
I wonder how the delivery service handles out-of-stock items. The Trader Joes
I shop at is routinely out of basic items. They told me that they have to
restock several times a day, because the store is too small to have much
product on the shelves.

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digisign
That's a shame, I could really use some tj delivery. It is always a hassle to
go and find parking (at least in the city).

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nonchalance
Does instacart have a formal relationship with Safeway? If so, why don't they
serve Safeway in Chicago?

~~~
snsr
Likely because you don't need a formal relationship to shop at a store.

I wonder whether the difficulty with Trader Joe's stems from use of their
name.

~~~
drakaal
That and I think Pirate Joe's in Canada has been created a climate where
Trader Joe's frowns on proxy shopping.

~~~
jlgreco
What could they actually do, other than frown? Ban people who shop there
several times a day? Seems like a shitty business move.

If I understand correctly, Trader Joes is using a rather flimsy trademark
claim against Pirate Joes, but that claim could be made even more flimsy with
better branding.

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gruseom
For crying out loud, why doesn't Trader Joe's just expand into Canada?
[http://www.piratejoes.ca/](http://www.piratejoes.ca/) is the biggest proxy
for demand I've ever seen.

People in the big Canadian cities would line up around the block to be able to
shop at a Trader Joe's. I know I would.

~~~
tptacek
Really? Why? I really don't get the Trader Joe's love.

~~~
mechanical_fish
The book _The Paradox of Choice_ could just as easily have been titled _The
Paradox of Trader Joe 's_. They have the same thesis.

TJ's succeeds by having, to first order, zero to one brand of everything: If
they stock it at all, it's probably the TJ's brand (secretly rebadged from its
original manufacturer). This isn't true for every category, but it is true for
most.

This reduces many shopping decisions at TJ's to binary ones: Is the TJ version
of X good enough? Or not? The bad news is that any given packaged product has
a decent chance of being lousy. But you may only need to learn that once,
because there's no other TJ's product in its category to confuse it with.

When TJ's is deemed good enough, your work is done. You do not need to decide
between the deluxe and the basic version. You do not need to try and remember
which brand reminds your wife of her childhood and which brand she thinks
tastes "off". Your buying decision now fits comfortably in a single byte of
memory.

When you stumble upon a TJ's product you actually like, you can always find it
again. The shelves are relatively free of the usual booby-traps, like the
"fat-free" flavorless versions of everything that masquerade as the regular
versions, or the Curse of the 174 Premium Brands All Named After Somebody's
Grandma that is the bane of Whole Foods shoppers who are trying to remember
what they bought last month.

Having one brand of everything feeds viral loops. The word-of-mouth on TJ's
brands is astonishing. The canonical example is their two-dollar wine. Some
people can't tell the difference between two-buck-Chuck and vinegar, others
can, but everybody knows which wine I'm talking about. I can send you out to
buy a bottle ("this is a product you will never forget") and be confident you
will come back from the store with the right thing, which is frankly more than
I can say for any other bottle of wine in the world.

Half of TJ's products have their own cult. You bite into an appetizer at the
party and exchange knowing glances with the host. Do you like what you're
tasting? Does the label look like a TJ's label? You will be able to buy your
own box tomorrow, with near-100% confidence.

It is true that if you don't eat packaged products there is little point in
Trader Joe's; the produce is average At best, awful at worst. And if you've
taken the time to develop actual taste in packaged products TJ's is also
useless, because unless your favorite brand is the TJ's brand, your favorite
brand is not there. My wife and I are buying less and less stuff at TJ's. But
the one advantage that never goes away is efficiency. TJ's stores are pretty
small. The shelves are easy to search, and the aisles shorter to traverse,
because there are fewer brands of everything.

~~~
tptacek
So this is a great comment, and I really do understand how these attributes
make TJ's a viable business. The dots that still haven't been connected for me
are the ones that draw the picture of how someone like Daniel upthread could
_wish for a TJ 's to open up in his city_.

Do you not have Whole Foods or some equivalent? WF has _massively_ better
produce, protein, dairy, cheese, bread, and wine/beer than TJ, and comparable
staples.

A well-maintained Kroger or Safeway has _massively_ better staples and
_significantly_ better produce and comparable protein and dairy; vs. Kroger,
TJ's only wins at dairy, cheese, bread, and wine, and not really by much.

