Cookaholics Bulletin Board

After waiting a long, long time, morning paper announed we will have TWO Trader Joe's in 2011, one on each side of the state line. Why two and why 6 miles apart I'll never know. Happy to have them. Wish they were a little closer to me but it beats a trip to St. Louis!
Fitzie

Fitzie,

TJ's won't open in an area which can't support at least 3 TJ's within 100 miles. Something about distribution economics.

Makes sense. Half-empty trucks do not make for happy discounts.

Makes sense, but I still can't believe they are not in CO....Denver by itself could support 3

Thanks, Fuzzy. That does make sense. Wonder where they'll put the third.

It finally opened.

My brother-in-law is in hospital not far from it so as we drove past TJ's we decided to pop in and have a look. I know we weren't in very good spirits but I was a little disappointed. I was expecting a huge store and this is definitely not that. I looked and looked for olive oil and finally found it and was surprised at how few kinds there were. Also thought they would have prepared foods, a bakery and/or a salad bar but nope. DH mostly stayed in the wine department and I didn't think I'd ever get him out of there. Flowers were beautiful and the produce looked pretty good. Lots of nice cheeses. To be honest, it reminded me of the corner grocery when I was growing up only bigger. If it were a lot closer, I'd probably shop there but it's much too far for weekly trips. If I'm in the area I'l stop in.

fitzie


PS - I don't know why I thought there would be a bakery, etc.

Sorry Fitzie. Generally speaking, they are quite small. The largest one in my area is still smaller than the typical mom-&-pop. It's definitely not a one-stop grocery even for non-eaterati. However, you can load up on a bunch of good-quality basics (plus a few not-so-basic odds and ends) for a pretty modest sum of cash. Careful on the cheeses, though. I don't know if it's just a local thing, but some of them seem to go moldy (cheddar, Gruyère, and gorgonzola, I'm looking at you.) fairly quickly. I try to only get what we can eat up in a week of those cheeses.

They're small but there never seems to be enough parking for some reason...

Amen to that. They choose small neighborhood locations and certainly don't go overboard buying/leasing property for parking. Even though I work relatively close to 2 TJ's, they are terribly inconvenient to get in and out in a reasonable time.

The 2 TJs I have access to are accessible by public transportation, so parking is never an issue for me