[noduerme]

TJs is the bomb. But their choice of store placement is definitely cryptic. It always seems to be a little too far for a regular grocery trip; somewhere close to a hip strip, close to a blue collar neighborhood, but not quite walking distance from either. They have a very specific demographic and I'm sure they've been making shrewd property decisions as well. Here in Oregon they have to compete with New Seasons, which mainly sells locally sourced produce and kinda straddles the upper line with Whole Paycheck, which everyone hates; and with GrossOut (Grocery Outlet) which is just... a kind of amazing place to go if you've never been there (they basically sell all the day-old food from wholesalers alongside this month's new test products that failed to launch - if you aren't picky what you're going to cook, GrossOut is inspirational).

[hahajk]

If you’re interested in learning about how they choose locations, Freakinomics did a good episode where they cover just that. In short, they look for inexpensive locations that are rising in value, with demographics that have high education but relatively low income. (so, like, English majors.)

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/season-11-episode-9/

[noduerme]

This is awesome. Thank you.

[ecshafer]

I feel like the location for Trader Joes in all of the places I have lived has been essentially the same. It is in the wealthy neighborhoods, but usually in a strip mall or other location that's a bit cheaper than Whole Foods. At least in Philly I think if there is a Trader Joe's there is a Whole Foods < 1 Mile away.

[carabiner]

In SoCal, TJ's is everywhere. I had one near my house, one in between my house and my office, and one by my office. This was like a 20 minute commute. It's part of culture there, like In-n-out.

[maxerickson]

I have SNAP accepting stores loaded into a gis (JOSM really) so it was quick to check. ~1/5 of the Trader Joe's stores in the country are in southern California (just a couple fewer locations than all of the northeast). More than 1/3 are in California.

[rootsudo]

I've never had a great experience with GroceryOutlet and don't understand how they operate or even have a franchise model.

But my experiences are from the Seattle Area south to Oregon.

[noduerme]

In the more rural / exurb parts of Portland metro they do really well. But they just have bizarre things. You can go load up on random bags of chips from a startup that's already out of business, that'll never get made again. And then one day they'll be the only market in the state that has raddichio. You have to be willing to go with it, but it's so cheap you can afford to just buy a bunch of stuff and make it work.

[toast0]

The couple of times I was in one (San Jose), it seemed like most of the stock was liquidated by other stores, and the extremely low frills store vibe was in full effect, so I suspect it's just a simple minimize the costs and hope. There was a pretty decent crowd, so they've got a market of IMHO price sensitive, quality insensitive customers.