TS: Trader Joe's v Whole Foods

The original Whole Foods was far from Yuppy. It was a little, smelly, hippie store with a bunch of dodgy looking loose food bins and a nice juice bar.

I got a job offer from Whole Foods but got a better one the same day so declined. I hear their not as fun a place to work as they've gotten more corporate. . .

I dig World Market more though, on the basis that I can get Crunchie Bars (well, Violent Crumble, but its the same thing) there.

the $1.99 wines at TJ these days are mostly Chilean and Argentinian with an Australian thrown in there once in a while. What are they going for in WDC?

The frozen shrimp and cereals are also good deals.

This is very true. Eventually my family pulled in enough cash to skip the commissary, though. That or we stopped eating or something.

The Charles Shaw $1.99 wine is apparently mostly a California thing. Shaw himself sold out of his winery business a while back but another company, Bronco, recently bought up the name from him and went to town. There was and is a huge wine glut and so the guy who had bought the rights to the name had the bright idea of making Charles Shaw a more or less semi-official TJ wine sold at cheap as hell prices in order to actually make some money off the glut. It's not a great wine, as you might guess, but it is a very good one that goes well with meals.

There's a couple of urban legends springing up around the Shaw label already -- go to this snopes.com link for a debunking as well as more details about it:

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/shawwine.htm

Big fucking crap pile re New York (and New Jersey): wine can only be sold at licensed liquor stores. That's right, no grocery store wine. (NJ restricts beer sales to package stores, too!) Grocery store wine and booze is, believe it or not, one of the big reasons I want to move to California.

Yeah, when I moved to California I was shocked to see alcohol being sold in grocery stores and drug stores. What a concept!

District of Columbia: Liquor can only be sold at authorized liquor stores. Grocery stores can apply to sell beer and wine, but if a chain has more than one store in DC only one of those stores can sell it. UNLESS (according to a new regulation that was specifically passed to coax Whole Foods to open a third DC store) the store spends $500,000+ in building or renovation costs.

Virginia: Liquor can only be sold at state-run liquor stores. Grocery stores and drugstores can sell beer and wine.

Montgomery County, Maryland: Liquor can only be sold at county-run liquor stores. Supermarkets can apply to sell beer and wine, but are subject to a law similar to the one restricting DC grocers. There are also "delis" that sell wine and beer.

When I went to Annapolis several years ago I did a double take when I saw liquor in a drugstore -- I'm just not used to that degree of liberty in alcohol sales.

Anyway, Whole Foods has nice house brand peppermint tea, but Trader Joes is handier to reach for me, so they win. I'm sure there are lots of yuppies up in the northern part of the U district who like having their WF up there, but it's damned annoying to reach from downtown. Oh, how I love Seattle traffic jams...

But as far as TJ and WF are concerned - here I am stuck with only WF - and that's a 45 minute drive from home. But I do love their cheese and breads - and their selection of that Mountain Sun/Walnut Orchards natural fruit juice. And their salad and soup bar is pretty damn good, too. When I go home to California I usually do a "big trip" to Trader Joe's and Cost Plus, buying dry goods/canned/not fresh - and then I ship them here to Florida (or lug them across the country in my car). Shipping is expensive, but I think it's worth it. When family and friends come to visit I usually send them a "Wish List" of TJ products.

More to the point, TJ wins for the cheap La Brea Bakery bread, their spinach pasta, the amazing cheap selection of cheese and the giant $1.99 tubs of fresh basil.

my favorite (revealing) anecdote from shopping there (on my parents behalf, thanks!): i went in to get some snacks and there were two check-out lines available. the woman in front of me had a tube of pre-made polenta. she kept glancing anxiously around the store, and especially over at the other check-out line, and also at the label of her polenta. the nervous energy contained in this person could have powered the harsh neon lighting that illuminated the store. she finally, after shooting nasty looks around one last time, switched over to the other check-out line in a huff. even though the lines were of equal length, she must have felt that she would save time at the other line. she was wrong, and i got out ahead of her, even though i didnt care one way or the other. i cant help but thinking that the people who go into this particular store are, in general, people who try to hard, and for no good reason.

if trader joe's is like a lobotomy, then whole foods in arlington is the opposite. this is the preserve of the overeducated and hyper-self-aware NOVA and NWDC suburbanites. everyone in there is pushy, their social skills having been eroded by years of suburban living. this is a store for x-hippies who have somehow over-rationalized thier giving up as some sort of personal progress or pragmatism, and, to avoid letting their self-doubt manifest itself, they instead over-compensate by constantly trying to manifest their own sense of self-importance without actually saying anything at all. the store itself is huge, and for all of its pretence, whole foods sells all sorts of stupid shit. for evey cook who goes in there for the high-quality produce, ten people go in and stuff their carts full of craftily named upmarket versions of the same shit that one can buy in a regular supermarket, ya know, the ones frequented by, like, black people and stuff (I am NOT accusing everyone of racism, but the DC area is very segregated...). whole foods uses the "healthy" and "conscious" image it portrays to, for the most part, sell lots of cookies and pre-made food, much of which seems to be fried. Lastly, according to an article in the Washington City Paper, there is only one unionized store in the entire chain. one of the stores in NOVA is trying to unionize, and the management has been distributing "quizzes" which seek the opinions held on unions by employees. this is possibly, or may even be totally, illegal.

I can't hope to afford anything at Whole Foods.

Like Gourmet Garage-- they nicked everything but the hawaiian shirts from TJs, but with double the prices.

Geeta: TJs in the suburbs only. I have driven up to Westchester for the sole purpose of shopping there.

The artsy folk there don't consider themselves to be "yuppie enough", besides the organic food trade is served by the little "mom and pop" grocers.

Nope.

Rainbow is the bomb diggity

but I do wish they would get a meat section

cheese section is fucking awesome

this rainbow place sounds good

The Rainbow cheese buyer likes the cheese I mentioned in another thread that has maggots in it just btw.

This guy --->>> http://www.gordonzola.net/

mm delicious maggots

okay ftr I have never gotten maggoty cheese there. this week we had some fancy shmancy goat cheese that was more like brie, I forget where it was from.

The WF nearest my house seems to be crowded all the time and for that reason I often regret going in there. Too much like a zoo and the parking lot insanity etc. Once around the holidays, I got into a shouting match with a guy about parking and when I calmed down I just thought "what in the hell am I doing here?" and left. That said, every once in awhile if I'm over in that part of town I'll brave it and I usually end up getting something at the (admittedly great) food bar.

Luckily I have a cheaper health-food co-op nearer my house that takes care of my needs, and there are some basics I get at Safeway as well.

I never have been able to understand what makes TJ's so great to so many people. Whenever I've gone in there I haven't really felt the urge to buy much of anything. I went through a phase of really digging their cookies, though, when I was a student.

I think a lot of it has to do with prepackaging, being cheap, and an "alternative" to Albertsons/Safeway/what-have-you. I'm sure that's its appeal to my mom, who cooks for one and doesn't have a ton of money, but likes to feel like she's indulging her inner hippie.

y'know, she goes there and spends $20 and she has meals for the week.

Yeah, that makes sense.

rainbow got 100x better after they were bought out
for that reason, both WF and TJ can promptly eff off

?

Rainbow is a worker-owned cooperative

Central Market > Whole Foods

-- milo z, Tuesday, 15 July 2008 19:20 (Yesterday) Link

Totally.

I go to my barber for 2 reasons: 1. he cuts my hair as I like it, and 2. he has the best Haight St. gossip/politics. Yesterday, I got a cut and he gave me the skinny on the Cala lot: It's been offered to both TJs and Rainbow, and both turned it down! The WF proposal is 300 underground parking spaces and 300 above-store condos sandwiching WF. Poor arithmetic aside, WF is pressing ahead to develop there, and it looks like the opposition is running out of steam: Even the most adamantly opposed folks still want SOME kind of grocery store there.

I don't think this is a good idea at all...

http://690stanyan.com/

I realized that one of the greatest things about Trader Joe's is that I feel like you don't have to play the "Watch for the screw" game, i.e. pricing does not appear to be done in the sleazy, scammy way it's usually done in normal supermarkets (calling something a "special" that's actually more expensive, fudging on the per-unit price, etc.)

WF appears to have won the battle for 690 Stanyan btw.

I'm sorry, make that the CITIZENS OF THE UPPER HAIGHT NEIGHBORHOOD have won.

Meh. I just hope the construction isn't too annoying.

I wonder if Lucky will up their game in response. And the poor little Greek grocery caught in the middle with the owner that has anger management probs? This is going to be HIGH FUCKIN DRAMA.

i'm totally in the trader joe's camp, but if whole foods made their blueberry bagels every day, i'd be there every day. mmmmmmm.

has anyone tried their beer?

2-buck Chuck is great for making large quantities of sangria. TJ gets this for having a great food, beer & wine selection at unbelievable prices.

But I have to extend deep thanks to Whole Foods for getting me through rough times with their copious samples & "try what you like" deli policy.

WF on 14th Street gives me a frackin anxiety attack, just standing in it. Then comes the irrational anger at nabe newbies getting pissy about there not being enough live food or whatever post-hippie con is the rage these days.

TJ's is a freelancer's BFF. Monday around two it's nearly empty and te chocolate yogurt is weirdl amazing and the pork sausages way cheap, though the coffee is beyond gak but then again, that's why God gave NYC Porto Rico's.

I am ADDICTED to Trader Joe's asparagus risotto. That is all

TJ's is a freelancer's BFF

OTM. Burbank TJ's in the late afternoon is a well-stocked ghost town. They actually stock the pumpkin granola and feta/onion pastries that La Brea TJ's doesn't know anything about.

The chicken Gorgonzola (frozen) at TJs is my favorite recent discovery. And it seems the Thai curry tuna is no longer stocked :/

GYOZA

also the trek mix with the tart cherries is really good

as said somewhere else, some of their indian food that comes in pouches is fucking great.

^^^^just had some for dinner

My frozen food purchases at TJ have dropped off to nothing over the past couple of years given my preference to cook from scratch now, but they are still crucial for lots of other things.

Heard today that the Whole Foods my sis works at has seen a boom in business for a very simple reason -- people are eating out less, therefore shopping at Whole Foods (and other spots, obv) a lot more.

i just ate practically a whole container of tj's lacey cookies tonight (bf managed to steal a couple of bites and some crumbs). they are magnificent. actually, in terms of junkfood, tj's is the best - all that gourmet chocolate stuff, and not totally out of my acceptable price range.

Went to Trader Joe's for the first time ever and was not impressed. I don't get what the big deal is. Thinking of all the grocery stores I have ever experienced in my life, Sun Harvest is still up there followed by Central Market and HEB. Here in Maryland there is no HEB (centralmarket or sunharvest)but I am loving the Price Depot Grocery (teehee) across the street.

the big deal is super cheap tasty prepared food

Howard E Butt

omg aja worked at the trader joe's I went to every other day when I lived in sf

mind blown

alex in nyc racked up some crazy frequent flyer miles

Meijer's has all of that health food + hammers and toilet paper and stuff. I guess they discriminate against gays though so you can't have everything you want.

I saw a Meijer's somewhere in our travels but I don't think we actually entered the store and looked around. Indianapolis, maybe.

I like TJ's because

-it's about the same price as big box supermarkets around me. sometimes cheaper!
-they offer novel foods
-I recognize most of the ingredients on the label

I don't buy produce from them but they do some 'basics' really well. like basic dried mangos w/o added sugar or sulphur - or apricots w/o sugar and sulphur - that's hard to find in a normal supermarket.

If I had to choose, I'd have to go with Whole Foods for their wall of wine. But I live in the suburbs which means cooking from scratch. And lord knows we have plenty of liquor in the suburbs. Honestly I don't miss either store.

i watch a lot of those chef blind taste test videos like from epicurious and the like and its remarkable to me how often trader joe's and whole foods foods are criticized. they are never anyone's fave. regular supermarket stuff is always preferred to the TJ or WF dumpling, frozen pizza, french fry, noodles, sauce, etc.

I've been silently boycotting Whole Foods when I saw that you only get certain item discounts if you're a Prime member, fuck that shit and fuck Jeff Bezos

I have both stores available to me within a reasonably short drive. I shop at TJs about once every 10-12 weeks to restock a few pantry items, mainly nuts and dried fruit, olive oil, and a limited selection of other stuff like peanut butter, mustard, or slightly better wine for 'occasions'.

otoh, when a Whole Foods moved into an empty building another grocery store had abandoned, out of curiosity I spent an hour or so scoping out every section, trying to discover if it offered any items I'd want to buy there instead of elsewhere. I found nothing at all that interested me.

Trader Joe's doesn't sell wine in NYC anymore and I am BEYOND excited to stop in Michigan and pick up SO MANY BOTTLES at Christmas. I might stop on the way back too just to make sure I come with a bunch. At this point my regular wine preferences are around a $16-18 bottle, and I can cut that price in half or more at TJ's.

I think a lot of the store brand items are the same products but with different packaging. TJs has a lot of stuff that I don’t actually “need” so even though it’s inexpensive, it’s like impulse buy type stuff and when I focused on saving money and “intentional” spending, I stopped going there. That’s just a me thing though. I will get stuff at Amazon Grocery (aka Whole Foods) if I am in a hurry or if I want a specific thing that only they have.

TJ's prices on pantry basics are lower than other supermarket prices for top quality items iirc. You can get cheaper tuna, but it will be the terrible kind, whereas at TJs I think the store brand is a higher level of quality at the same price as the cheap kind elsewhere. This might only be true in niche categories but they are categories I care about: coffee, tuna, gluten-free pasta, turbinado sugar, eggs, condiments like sesame oil and sauces, spices.

And their cheeses are crazy cheap. Boursin is like $8 anywhere else, including BJs where they're supposed to be all about volume deals, but it's like $4.69 at Trader Joe's?!??!?