Like many New Yorkers, I’ll stand in long lines patiently waiting to buy food in only one food market and that’s Trader Joe’s. Why? What does Trader Joe’s have that countless other food stores don’t have? And what can that master food merchant teach us about presenting our own products, services or even ourselves to today’s sharp-in-the-know audiences?
- To start with, Trader Joe’s offers top quality, often-unique products with super prices, many carrying the Trader Joe’s label. Their yummy Peanut Butter, costing a fraction of major brands, is made with peanuts and salt PERIOD – free of dicey additives that turn some other brands into dried out sludge. Trader Giotto’s Virgin Olive Oil is at least half the price of other olive oils with fancier Italianate names, though it too is imported from Italy. Their expansive variety of teas, (Mango and Decaffeinated Irish Breakfast Tea are my favorites) are also sweetly priced.
- Trader Joe’s also has flat out the best service in town. When I once asked an employee if they were out of a popular lettuce, she took off on an immediate search. When she returned carrying my lettuce, her sweater was dusted with onionskins. Turns out, the wisp of a thing had waded through piles of heavy onion crates parked out in the street to get to the lettuce crates. And she had done it with the same eagerness to help customers that’s expressed by all Trader Joe’s employees. Ask any of them where a certain product is located and they’ll stop whatever they’re doing and cheerfully lead you directly to it. Amazing.
- Trader Joe’s is also a gas. Shopping there is never the same-old-same-old, never the humdrum chore experienced in other food markets. Where else can you find clanging bells (employed for inter-store communications), Hawaiian shirts (no pedestrian uniforms allowed here) and tempting new products constantly popping up on shelves? Add that to inventive store signs, dynamic food packaging and plenty of sample nibbles to produce entertaining store visits that also help take your mind off long cashier lines.
- Equally engaging is their web site featuring the same breezy tone and visual style as their stores. Speaking of style, Trader Joe’s shows how to pinch pennies without mercy and still incorporate top-notch art in company visuals. Most of the illustrations used to decorate their sign-age, packaging and web site (like those pictured here on their shopping bags) are 19th century engravings. In perfect tune with the store’s outside the box, unique style, these whimsical illustrations are copyright free and cost them pretty much ZERO.
- Showcasing savory recipes, their web site imparts solid info too. Foods with the Trader Joe’s label are not only free of artificial flavors and colors, preservatives, MSG and Trans Fats, but they also don’t contain something that many of us are concerned about but rarely see mentioned front and center. None of their foods contain genetically modified ingredients.
So if whatever you are marketing features even a fraction of Trader Joe’s original thinking, creative style, resourcefulness and devotion to excellent products and service fired by the desire to continually improve, you’re well on the way to a home run.
More on Marketing and Food:
- Marketing 101 – Delighting Your Audience
- Hocus Pocus Food Prices and Packaging
- Hair, Beetles and Beaver Anal Glands in our Food
- So how much Wood Pulp did you eat today?
- CVS Self-service Checkout – Faster, Yes – But is it Better?
- Dealing with Difficult Salespeople
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