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Comment by pighive | Hacker News Reader

I am glad I found Trader Joe’s. Never have I ever been excited about a trip to super market. It rivals Costco too (in food section). Before that, I took weekly trips to Aldi/Lidl for a year, and few of their products’ quality is quite low in my opinion, and not everything is cheap.

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Trader Joe is a fun trip, but my enthusiasm is tempered by some truly disgusting house brand crap they sometimes sell as well as frequently dropping items that I like (e.g. crackable almonds in shells, half-popped popcorn).

This made me laugh. I love TJs bit their house brand sriracha is just so terrible. Just stock the rooster!

I really liked that half popped popcorn.

FWIW, this describes how to make it, though I haven't tried yet.

https://www.flytraplife.com/blog/half-popped-popcorn/

I tried to go all out on TJs, but I couldn't make it work. They are, like one commenter above said, "the disappearing middle" even though they're kind of the bottom. Costco beats them out for most of the things I'd buy: booze, meat & poultry, bulk veggies, dairy. The only things I'll buy exclusively at TJs are berries. What's up with their soupy peanut butter too?

BTW: Did you know that Trader Joe‘s kind of belongs to ALDI as well. It is owned by a company of one of Aldi‘s sons.

I've heard that the Aldi guys (there's Aldi South and North in Germany) don't compete for other countries and usually one of them gets the whole.

As the US market is larger than most other countries combined they shared it with this agreement (Aldi is from Aldi South, TJ is Aldi North).

Might be an urban legend.

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