Book Thoughts: Becoming Trader Joe
2025-10-24
Similar to Shoe Dog — and different in the way that Nike is different from Trader Joe’s.
Three things I want to take away from this book:
- Joe was incredibly structured in how he thought about problems. He wanted to have a retail store where he paid people well which required him to have goods that had a high price per amount of space they took up. He was willing to cycle through lots of weird ideas (including things like gun ammo) as long as they met this criteria.
- Discontinuities. Trader Joe’s would specifically target little edges in product categories. As an example, they would become experts in the regulations for say cheese or butter to build limited edition products. In particular they did this on the product side, carefully understanding product categories, and on the regulatory side, carefully reading the fine print to find edges that others didn’t have. An example of a discontinuity is being willing to sell coffee in non standard container sizes or for a limited period of time.
- The concept of double entry retailing, which is another way of saying that decisions are interconnected. As an example, paying people more reduces shrinkage.
I didn’t know whether or not to laugh or cry when he said that Trader Joe’s target customer is overeducated and underpaid.
This book helped me better understand how retail, goods, and media are interconnected. The transition from network tv to cable tv happens at the same time as Trader Joe’s is shifting away from homogenized consumer packaged goods to the more varied assortment we see today. A similar version of this happened with Facebook and the DTC brands of the 2010s.