[HN Gopher] Where in the world are Trader Joe's warehouses? (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Where in the world are Trader Joe's warehouses? (2015)
Author : walkersutton
Score : 172 points
Date : 2022-02-04 04:53 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sburer.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (sburer.github.io)
| oliv__ wrote:
| Looking at the map I wonder where the CO, UT, NM stores get their
| supplies from? Seems like the only area without its own warehouse
| chana_masala wrote:
| I really enjoy this site's design. At first I thought that
| LocalCDN was blocking some CSS/JS but to my surprise, no - it
| just looks that way. I like it.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I like everything about "no-css" style except full-width
| column. It's just too hard to read long lines of text.
|
| Granted, it can be fixed by resizing my window.
|
| *I also prefer sans-serif fonts but that's just my personal
| preference.
| sdoering wrote:
| It should be noted that it is a project from 2015.
|
| But just looking at the clusters, esp. on the east coast and look
| at the marked known locations one can visually see that the 22
| clusters don't make sense. You can visually cluster a lot of
| stores towards the existing warehouses and remove the need for
| the estimated ones in between.
|
| But still this is an interesting approach as it helps in
| identifying the clusters that seem to be served by these known
| warehouses.
|
| Maybe not taking the distance as the crow flies, but trying a
| street route could be an optimization. And then trying to find
| the minimal amount of clusters that still show the known
| locations at roughly the center.
|
| Not sure if this would be a valid approach.
| rmason wrote:
| Back in the nineties a very popular East Lansing supermarket
| announced they were closing. A campaign was raised to get Trader
| Joes to locate in the space. A major campaign was raised and they
| gathered a pretty amazing 20-25,000 signatures online.
|
| The organizers got a nice letter back from Trader Joes who said
| they really appreciated their enthusiasm but the East Lansing
| area was too small a municipal area for a Trader Joes but if that
| criteria changed they'd keep us in mind. A number of the group
| years later kept the campaign going and maintained an active
| Facebook page.
|
| A couple of months ago Trader Joes announced an East Lansing
| store in that very strip mall they'd turned down decades earlier.
| Different store but the exact same development.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| TJ's is OK but it's no substitute for a full supermarket.
| smm11 wrote:
| What is a real supermarket?
| browningstreet wrote:
| ..like Kroger, or Whole Foods?
|
| I would say Kroger isn't a real supermarket, it's a junk food
| market and pharmacopia.
| mmmpop wrote:
| >> I would say Kroger isn't a real supermarket, it's a junk
| food market and pharmacopia.
|
| I cannot fathom how you've come to this conclusion. I've
| been to 100 Kroger stores in my life and not one fits your
| description.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I get the sentiment: I was very excited to have an Aldi store
| being built near me. Great value for money and an almost "grab
| what you need and you wont get a shock at the till" unlike
| other stores that do stuff like 2 slightly different tomato
| varieties one double the price of the other. Another example
| the coke is always a good price. Other supermarkets keep
| rotating the 24 and 30 packs prices to pretend there is a
| discount at any given time.
| test6554 wrote:
| My one and only experience with shopping at Aldi was nearly
| rotten fruit, off-brand cardboard-tasting cereal and stale
| chips. The price is hard to beat, but I feel too much like a
| raccoon digging in a dumpster.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| My experience as well. Both at Aldi and Lidl. There's also
| zero consistency week to week. They stock their shelves
| with whatever the truck happens to bring in. Granted,
| they're both "discount" grocery stores so I'm not expecting
| gourmet fare but I'll gladly spend the extra few dollars to
| shop at our local family owned grocery store that always
| has great produce, meats, and a wide variety of options.
| noduerme wrote:
| >>stuff like 2 slightly different tomato varieties
|
| I'm such an idiot shopper. I was on a date with a girl and
| going to cook her dinner but I was missing a few vegetables.
| Went to Fred Myer (local Kroger chain). I was picking up some
| potatoes and the girl found a stack for half the price that
| looked just as good, hidden on the other side of the produce
| aisle. She was like, "you don't look for good deals, do you?"
| Ugh. Shamed. I wish I'd had an excuse like "I wanted organic"
| but the truth was I'd never known there was a whole separate
| stack. Damn you Fred Myer!
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Oh yeah thats another trick, out the cheaper ones somewhere
| illogical! They just are doing price discrimination based
| on how much time you have to hunt for the best deal.
| sampo wrote:
| The Norwegian groceries delivery company Oda, in their
| app you can sort each category (e.g. hard cheeses) view
| for price per item, or price per kg.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah ordering online is sweet in this regard
| noduerme wrote:
| To me the downside of online ordering is I always feel
| the need to tip extravagantly to make sure the delivery
| person doesn't get me rotten tomatoes. It ends up being a
| lot more expensive than just putting on a mask and
| trundling down to the market. If I'm in the middle of
| work I can justify it.
|
| I used to enjoy going to the market. (Well, and a lot of
| other things that aren't fun anymore).
| unwind wrote:
| As a Scandinavian person living almost wholly outside
| "tipping culture", that worry just sounds bizarre.
|
| Here, if you order food for home delivery from the major
| grocery chains, the order is not packed by the driver,
| and fresh produce is typically in smaller paper bags
| inside the large outer bag (the ones the driver carries
| from the truck).
|
| There is no tipping of the driver, who just puts down the
| bags outside our front door.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| I don't think the delivery person has any influence on
| your produce - at least in the UK, pickers and delivery
| people are separate jobs, and I can't imagine it any
| different in any efficient organization. (Also nobody I
| knows tips for delivered groceries in the UK - the
| delivery charge is supposed to pay for the delivery. This
| might be different in the US like all things tipping.)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Eh, that's not been my experience at Fred Meyer. The
| produce section is open, with aisles, and while the
| organic and non-organic versions of a particular item are
| not usually next to each other (I could guess why),
| they're not hidden nor difficult to find. Sometimes the
| organic is farther back, sometimes up front, you just
| have to use your eyes -- it's all in plain view.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Walmart's generic soda. 70-90 cents for a
| 2-liter from what I've seen. I particular Diet Dr Thunder,
| generic dr pepper is a litmus test for me in generic soda
| brands.
|
| Their diet stuff flies off the shelves, so that HN story
| about diet soda "spoiling" (was it methlyation?) isn't a
| problem. I doubt it lasts even a day on the shelf.
|
| Their kettle salt+vinegar potato chips, orange "yogurt"
| (comparable to yoplait orange cream "yogurt"), generic life
| cereal is all pretty good. You can tell, because those are
| often not in stock, I think their production is limited by
| agreements with the name brands I would speculate.
|
| Aldi's generic soda was pretty bad. Meijers, most grocery
| generics, all pretty crappy.
| noduerme wrote:
| 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).
| rootsudo wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| carabiner wrote:
| 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.
| hahajk wrote:
| 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/
| [deleted]
| ecshafer wrote:
| 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.
| rootsudo wrote:
| I like the model he created to "detect" the warehouses, but it's
| much easier to see the corporations via the state corporation
| agency. There is also the idea that They wouldn't have pure
| warehouses for everything and are direct white labeled direct
| from manufacturers.
| wildzzz wrote:
| I'm sure many of the Trader Joe's store brand products are
| white label. It seems inefficient to have such a wide range of
| frozen products that are constantly changing. They simply find
| a frozen pasta dish manufacturer that abides by whatever
| quality guidelines and just change the label.
|
| Another possibility is that trader Joe's does actually
| manufacturer a lot of their rotating products but just simply
| rotates the store that receive them so they don't need to have
| a massive production for something so small. Cacio Pepe sauce
| for new england area for this month, southwest region next
| month.
| hbarka wrote:
| Trader Joe's is a favorite study in trying to explain how it
| manages to thrive with just a small number of SKUs (~4000)
| relative to typical grocery stores that carry 50,000 SKUs.
| Perhaps this might shed light on their warehousing strategy.
| heeen2 wrote:
| Trader Joes is sort of related to ALDI and the condensed
| offering of ALDI and its success has been written about before
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/sanfordstein/2019/10/25/aldi-ri...
| ak217 wrote:
| But Trader Joe's uses a very different strategy compared to
| ALDI. It caters to an audience that demands a much more
| upmarket experience, and puts a lot more effort into team
| culture, store decor/experience, and sourcing quality white-
| label food SKUs for house branding.
| [deleted]
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| A big part of this is that they are ruthless with cutting
| products that don't perform well. A good chunk of those ~4000
| sku's are dedicated to items that are available for very short
| periods as they are tested.
|
| I think a big part of Trader Joe's success is that they have a
| good core of staples that people are willing to come in for,
| and then they have a big selection of new and interesting items
| that people are willing to try, since they're already there.
| The quality of the staples allows them to fly under the radar
| with the rotating stuff, which is in reality pretty hit or
| miss. But this symbiotic relationship between the core and the
| experimental sides allows them to quickly iterate through the
| experimental stuff to find more popular items.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Seems spot on with my experience and shopping there. Well
| said.
| smm11 wrote:
| The frozen food section at TJ is an innovation in itself.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Easy. You don't need ten different types of butter, yogurt,
| tea, etc. You can grab the single TJ branded item and have a
| reliable indicator it's reasonably healthy, tasty, and a good
| value with minimal margin.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| It flips the script - make the store brands the central
| offering, with big names as a sideline.
|
| Another thing I've seen is that a product might appear only
| once in a while, but is never discontinued - it's in rotation
| with other products. I've seen this a lot with frozen goods.
| That gives them a way to offer variety without having
| zillions of SKUs in stock at any given time.
| miohtama wrote:
| Interesting bit of history of Aldi, the owner of Trader Joe. The
| grocery chain was founded by two brothers. They could not get
| along, so they decided to split the world to "Aldi North" and
| "Aldi South" chains. Both use the same logo.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| One of the brothers was also kidnapped in the 70s, and there
| was a whole court case about him writing off the ransom money
| as a business expense
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Trader Joe's presents an interesting punctuation problem. The
| most common rule, I think, for forming possessives is rule #1 of
| Strunk and White: "Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.
| Follow this rule whatever the final consonant." But Trader Joe's
| already has an apostrophe. Should the proper writing of this
| headline should have been...
|
| Where in the World are Trader Joe's's Warehouses?
|
| Or should it have been...
|
| Where in the World are Trader Joes's Warehouses?
| mindslight wrote:
| Trader Joe owns the stores, and he also owns the warehouses.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| A reasonable parsing at the time of the article I suppose
| (2016), but not today: Trader Joe (Joe Coulombe) cannot
| possibly own warehouses, as he died in 2020.
| mindslight wrote:
| Trader Joe lives on in spirit, along with Trader Jose and
| Trader Giotto.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| I think this option makes the most sense, rather than
| treating "Trader Joe's" as one unit that has different rules
| than normal language
| Jxl180 wrote:
| If we swap it with Amazon, it sounds correct to say "where are
| Amazon's warehouses?" But is it really incorrect to say, "where
| are Amazon warehouses?"
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I dunno. It sounds wrong to say "where are Safeway
| warehouses?" -- it sounds more appropriate to have instead
| said "where are _the_ Safeway warehouses? "
| browningstreet wrote:
| I think there's a rule you don't repeat punctuations like
| this... one is enough.
| alksjdalkj wrote:
| "Trader Joe's" could also be being used as an adjective in this
| headline right?
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Yes, but that would change the intended meaning of the
| headline.
| [deleted]
| Digory wrote:
| Clever, but the guesses aren't useful, because "the middle" is
| rarely the most efficient place to get goods off trucks and rail.
| I know the TJs in Kansas are stocked from a Kansas Aldi
| distribution center, near rail and highways.
|
| A better start might be mapping known Aldi warehouses.
|
| https://careers.aldi.us/employment/olathe-warehouse-jobs/61/...
| kabes wrote:
| That would mean that Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud share warehouses?
| indigodaddy wrote:
| It seems fairly unlikely doesn't it? I was under the
| impression they had a fairly intense, and not so friendly,
| rivalry.
| picsao wrote:
| elloworld1221 wrote:
| Afaik, they have been working for the last few years on
| cooperation, since the original brothers are now out of the
| picture.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Yup - e.g. and IIRC, Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud are unifying
| their store brands in Germany.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| A necessity in order to stay competitive against Lidl
| (comparable customer segment). ALDI took quite a punch by
| Lidl in the Netherlands (these were all of the ALDI Nord
| concern, but were not labelled as such), and depended on
| inertia (being the first and most well-established
| discount grocer) for too long.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Ah ok, thanks, it's been a few years since I've kept up..
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The corridors are similar Western NY -> DC corridor is probably
| served by a facility in Pennsylvania. New England to Albany to
| Connecticut is probably near Worcester, MA.
|
| I know that for McDonalds and Aldi, Albany, NY is "Boston" and
| Utica west is "Pennsylvania". It's all about the transport
| corridors and modes.
| jreed91 wrote:
| Funny thing. The author now has a Trader Joe's in his hometown.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| I wish Trader Joe's would start a delivery service since they
| don't partner with delivery vendors like Instacart. Great and
| unique selection of food!
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _Great and unique selection of food!_
|
| I suspect that's why they don't partner with delivery vendors.
| Grocery stores would rather you came in person. You'll make
| impulse buys, they can direct you to products where they have
| excess inventory, and they can maintain a direct relationship
| with you.
|
| Most are forced to offer delivery precisely because they don't
| have a "great and unique selection of food." If they don't
| support delivery, you'll get the same products from a
| competitor who does. Trader Joe's doesn't have to because you
| can't find their products anywhere else.
| wildzzz wrote:
| Trader Joe's definitely benefits from people walking the
| aisles. They put all kinds of interesting new products right
| next to staples so you are more inclined to buy it. If I
| could just browse the product offering online, I'd be able to
| just pick exactly what I needed and wouldn't be checking out
| with some new dip, cheese, beverage, or pasta sauce that had
| piqued my interest.
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| I remember in the beginning of the pandemic they were asked to
| comment on this, especially about how online ordering and
| pickup could help people in the situation.
|
| The COO (?) specifically said that they preferred to invest in
| their people and store experience, not automation or such
| technology.
|
| edit: ah, found the articles:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/trader-joes-wont-offer-groce...
|
| https://www.boston.com/food/coronavirus/2020/04/24/trader-jo...
| ghaff wrote:
| And delivery runs counter to that if you deliver from one of
| their stores because you now have pickers for delivery
| clogging up the aisles.
|
| It is an idiosyncratic store. To tell you the truth, I'm not
| as enthusiastic about them as some people are though I go in
| from time to time if they're convenient. They have a _lot_ of
| prepared food and possible healthier and better quality
| prepared food is still prepared food which I don 't eat a lot
| of.
| brewdad wrote:
| They've been a lifesaver for my son in college. He's living
| in a dorm but the housing service has struggled the entire
| year with staffing, food stocks, and just generally being
| able to feed kids who don't have 60-90 minutes to spend
| standing in line.
|
| TJ's is right off-campus and he's able to pick up meals he
| can prep in his dorm room a few nights a week when a lab or
| extra-curricular keeps him from being able to get food at
| the dining hall.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| It's especially baffling because TJs deliberately keeps a
| fairly small number of SKUs, so it is actually much better
| placed for online orders than more traditional grocery stores
| that have 12 kinds of Cheerios.
| [deleted]
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I think online ordering would just be too far outside their
| wheelhouse. I don't know what improvements they have made
| over the years, but when I used to work there years and years
| ago they were very much a human-driven company. By that I
| mean that ordering was done entirely manually by people that
| specialized in their sections, inventory tracking was rather
| loosely done, and the customer question of 'do you have any
| of X in the back' would need to be answered by actually
| checking in the back.
|
| From my experience on the customer side since, things haven't
| changed much at all. In light of that, I think that even now,
| online ordering for them would be a mess that the company
| just can't afford in customer goodwill.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Currently working in retail and that sounds like a
| nightmare of a system.
| [deleted]
| luckystarr wrote:
| K-means is a nice approximation but not very precise in this
| context. Averaged driving time and fuel usage probably played a
| role in determining a warehouse's location.
| fluxem wrote:
| The distribution of stores looks like this https://xkcd.com/1138/
| wodenokoto wrote:
| The author ends their analysis a little early, which is a shame,
| because it is a fun but also very interesting research question.
|
| Next step would be to plot the known/suspected warehouses and
| give an error measurement for the best predicted locations
| against those more or less known warehouses.
|
| Further steps could be to look into a pattern of how those
| known/suspected warehouses are placed in relation to stores, and
| extrapolate that into the missing warehouse locations.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-04 23:02 UTC)