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.
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.
So, the appeal is "take it or leave it" simplicity.
While the various choices at a normal grocery store have certainly caused us confusion on an occasion or two, I'm trying to remember the last time it did for us. Once you get into a routine over the months, particularly if one member does the bulk of the shopping, how hard is it to remember?
And we do like some variety. We switch things up a bit and try different brands/styles on occasion.
Oh well. Those types of things rarely appeal to me anyway.
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.