[mortenjorck]

This caught me completely by surprise. I never would have imagined that a grocery chain, even Trader Joe's, would have a publicly-accessible API endpoint for its current product catalog.

I wonder how the author even found the endpoint! Is this at risk of Trader Joe's noticing and moving to require an auth token? I can't imagine the openness being intentional, at least outside that brief period of techno-optimism in the late 2000s where it seemed like everyone was offering data sources to build into your Twitter bot.

Possible secondary application: could this GraphQL endpoint potentially be used to determine when a product is being discontinued?

[throwup238]

Trader Joes just doesn’t really compete on price except for a few loss leaders like milk and eggs. Most people I know who go to TJs treat it as their default store because of the shopping experience. The stores are smaller but well staffed, have a well curated and consistent product selection, and are just more pleasant than other grocery stores.

[pinkmuffinere]

I don't have any hard data to add, but on the face of it this just seems wrong. Their cheese is famously good-for-price / cheap-for-quality, and I think their fresh produce is very competitive as well.

[throwup238]

If your comparison is Whole Foods or one of the big grocery stores like Ralphs or Albertsons, sure Trader Joes looks competitive.

But if you compare it to stores that actually compete on price, it's overall much more expensive even if some items or categories are well priced. I.e. Grocery Outlet or Winco or Aldi (TJ's parent company?) or any number of ethnic grocery stores like Zion or Ranch 99 are much cheaper. YMMV but here in Southern California, there are probably a dozen different chains that compete on price that blow it out of the water.

[NewJazz]

I sometimes pay twice as much for apples at other stores. Their penut butter is decently cheap too.