Following A Busy October, Trader Joe’s Takes Deliberate Approach To Growth
With more than 500 locations across the country, Trader Joe’s is no stranger to many shoppers. But there is still room to grow and in October the grocer did just that, marking the year’s 10th month by opening 10 new stores.
The company’s newest store opened on October 25 in Vancouver, Wash., at 16701 Mill Plain Boulevard. The prior day, Trader Joe’s opened its Sugar Land, Tex., store at 13550 University Boulevard.
These two stores capped a busy month for the grocery retailer which, in October, also opened stores in Leesburg, Va.; South Pasadena, Calif.; Sparks, Nev.; Mt. Pleasant, S.C.; Coppell, Texas; South Lake City, Utah; Canyon Country, Calif.; and Chandler, Ariz. Other stores are in the works, too, including outposts in the California communities of Northridge and Marina, as well as in Sandy Springs, Ga.
However, Trader Joe’s ongoing store expansion efforts are never enough to satisfy the appetite consumers have for a new location in their community.
The topic of where Trader Joe’s pinpoints new locations came up on the latest episode of the "Inside Trader Joe's" podcast. Co-hosts Tara Miller and Matt Sloan addressed the frequent question posed by Trader Joe’s fans: “How do I get a Trader Joe’s in my neighborhood?”
That depends, said Sloan, vice president of marketing for the chain. “Although it might be an area that's really densely populated and traffic patterns are such that getting from one Trader Joe's to another neighborhood, it may be close, but it might take a long time, that could be interesting,” he explained. “The numbers of people, well, more typically is better. So, dense population, or people coming from a larger trade area, that area over which people will reasonably travel to get from where they live to come shop at hopefully what becomes their neighborhood Trader Joe's."
Miller, the grocer’s marketing director, agreed that Trader Joe’s has been in acceleration mode, reflected in the recent openings. “We're adding lots of stores, even though we're a company that's been in business for close to 60 years at this point. We are growing, and we are growing at a pretty good rate right now.”
That seems to be the case heading into the midpoint of the 2020s and beyond. “Again, we're not growing by acquiring, we're growing by one store at a time, very deliberately. We're looking at what I think more than 1,000 sites right now, which just boggles my mind because, of course, for the sake of clarity, we don't have anywhere near 1,000 stores right now,” said Sloan.
Added Miller: “And we don't have any plans to have 1,000 stores in the near future. We are growing at a pace that we can sustain. While we find locations making sure that we're in the right place, we're also growing people, we're growing leadership. Most of the crew we hire when we open a store is new crew. And so those are folks who then have to be trained to work at a Trader Joe’s. So, it's a process, right? It's not something that just happens overnight.”
