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Theory Papers

Like many consumers I love Trader Joe's and make it a point of reading their Flyer end to end though lately I have not been there too much and they have wisely stopped mailing me their publication. They need people who will shop at their store with some reliability not folks like me who read the Flyer to be amused and entertained. To learn that the founder was a man way ahead of his time did not come as a great surprise

Joe may have stood on some tall shoulders, but he saw further than any man in groceries before him; by 1967 he had successfully envisioned the consumer of 2017; by 1978 he had perfected a strategy for private labeling that has come to dominate the industry, even as competitors are still playing catch-up trying to understand and mimic it. He did this meticulously, through hundreds of pages of internal documents—he called them Theory Papers—whereby he forecast cultural shifts, currency fluctuations, and educational trends and drew on philosophical tracts, military planning strategy - Lorr, Benjamin. The Secret Life of Groceries (pp. 21-22). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

There are specific things I look to buy at that store when I am there but what is unique about the shopping experience there compared to any other grocery store I know is the sense that you might discover something you love and value if you spend the time to browse. In every trip I have been well rewarded for my browsing time. Maybe not enough for the store to consider me the kind of shopper they want to nurture but still a positive experience for me. Makes me wonder how Joe would have accounted for the likes of us in his Theory Papers.

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