Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys

But my preference is to have a few stores, as far apart as possible, and to make them as high volume as possible. With Mac the Knife we could draw people from twenty-five to fifty miles away. When we opened Ventura in 1983, 30 percent of our business came from Santa Barbara. Sales per store, sales per square foot: those are the measures I look at.

Equally important was our practice of giving every full-time employee an interview every six months. At Stanford I’d been taught that employees never organize because of money: they organize because of un-listened-to grievances.

His first rule for new ideas was to always think outside the box, but always consider our customers and employees.

I began the transition of Pronto into Trader Joe’s. I resigned at the end of 1988. During those twenty-six years, our sales grew at a compound rate of 19 percent per year. During the same twenty-six years, our net worth grew at a compound rate of 26 percent per year. Furthermore, during the last thirteen years of that period, we had no fixed, inter

The answer is to design a store that has no competition. That’s why Mac the Knife should not carry any SKU in which it is not outstanding.

Vendors should get prompt decisions. Some of our greatest coups were generated by our commitment to make an offer within twenty-four hours of a presentation.

how we built a successful business on high wages.

On the left side of the ledger is the business in terms of how its customers see it: I call this the Demand Side. On the right side of the ledger are the factors that limit or determine the retailer’s ability to satisfy those demands: the Supply Side.

The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset,