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Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

Trader Joe's appears to have the same mentality (but slightly different scale/demographic). Low variety of SKUs, but decent quality and price.

I don't know if shopping at Costco or TJs "feels like winning", but shopping at Walmart/Kroger joints definitely feels like losing. The latter are a minefield of fake sales & arcane pricing, strategically overpriced crap, and simply too much variety (choice paralysis). Usually amid a depressing environment (poorly treated workers). If I want endless variety, I simply shop online.

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Kroger bought the Roundys brand grocery stores in my area (Pick n Save, Copps, MetroMarket). I feel like a loser just walking into the place. Cut out ~70% of the locally made (Wisconsin) products, jacked up the prices, which were already on the high side b/c it’s a convenience grocery store, not a big list grocery store, and destroyed employee morale.

They did the exact same to Fred Meyers in the Pacific Northwest.

Trader Joe's is pretty good. They have good nut selections and the 1 pound chocolate bars are very tempting.

Trader joes ironically is the US branch of aldi nord. (Aldi süd owns aldi US)

If you like TJ, aldi ought to be pretty similar.

They existed beforehand, and aldi nord bought them out. They didn't change much about how the company operated though. They might have streamlined it a little, maybe.

I remember seeing trader joes branded cans the last couple of times I was in an aldi nord, as well as the cigarettes they're known for. (I live in an aldi süd country)

They did change. It was very progressive at first but TJ is now very different:

For example, they rotate in new products very often now (and cancel old standbys) - even lots of experimental products (kinda have to with the volume of new products). Lots of these new products are snacks or sweets kinds of things. Many of the new products obviously will not stay on the shelf for the long term.

For another, at my regional stores they have also stopped offering two kinds of ripe kiwis (by the 1, by the 5-6 / plain, organic). There is now one kind and it's not ripe. The "not ripe" was the end of me buying kiwis at TJ. Shockingly, my local Safeway has started carrying ripe kiwis.

For me, they have become more like safeway in how less usable they are.

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