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thestrategicmom · 4 years

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How Trader Joe’s Can Emerge from COVID-19 As The Greatest of All-Time (G.O.A.T.) Grocery Chain

The following post is not a paid promotion or endorsement.

Despite our changed COVID-19 reality, there’s one thing that remains constant…our need for food. While some may depend on takeout or even growing their food, there’s a high likelihood that you or someone in your household will be thinking about, planning for, or venturing out to do some grocery shopping in the near future. Last week, it was time for me to restock on groceries, so I put on my mask and ventured out to one of my favorite grocery store chains, Trader Joe’s. Founded in California in 1967 by a man named Joe, Trader Joe’s has earned a cult-like following over the last decade.

Why do I and so many others love Trader Joe’s so much? I’d say it’s a combination of their high quality one-of-a-kind products, crazy affordable prices that are generally 16% lower than other grocery stores, and customer service with a genuine personal touch. I’ve always been impressed with Trader Joe’s fundamental value proposition based on their products, people, and pricing, but seeing their COVID-19 safety measures during my most recent visit, made me realize that Trader Joe’s has the potential to earn the title of G.O.A.T., greatest grocer of all time.

While some may argue that Trader Joe’s has already reached G.O.A.T. status, I see some room for growth. Below, I go in depth into Trader Joe’s fundamental strengths (Product, People, and Pricing), their new COVID safety measures, and an opportunity for them to emerge from COVID-19 as the greatest grocery store of all time by expanding into minority communities .

Products

You can’t start a discussion about Trader Joe’s without talking about their products. In fact, if you’ve ever heard someone rant about how great Trader Joe’s is, they probably began by talking about an amazing specialty product that can only be purchased at Trader Joe’s. Whether it’s cookie butter (a delicious biscoff-cookie-flavored spread), or a 10-minute frozen bag meal that tastes like your favorite takeout restaurant at a fraction of the price and risk, Trader Joe’s products have become even more vital now that we’re spending so much time at home.

Here are some of my favorite products (Bonus: Click here to download a free Trader Joe’s shopping list I created):

Undeniably Delicious Frozen Foods: In my humble opinion, Trader Joe’s has some of the best frozen foods I’ve ever tasted, and they’re clearly cheaper than frozen items at other grocery stores. Frozen meals are a quick and easy way to make lunch or dinner in minutes with little prep and minimal cleanup. Some of my go-tos include:

Chinese take-out replacements: Mandarin orange chicken, BBQ chicken teriyaki, the mildly sweet and spicy beef and broccoli, and chicken fried rice. I typically serve the first three with minute rice and bam! Dinner or lunch is served.

Indian take-out replacements: Chicken Tikka Masala (just buy it and I promise you’ll thank me later), vegetable panang curry, and butter chicken with basmati rice

Italian take-out replacements: Mushroom and Black Truffle Flatbread (decadent but so damn delicious), roasted vegetable lasagna (a little pricier than other items but also feeds more people), fettuccine with mushrooms, and stacked eggplant parmesan

Hamburger Helpers: If you’re looking for some frozen meat patties to jazz up your ordinary burger, look no further than Trader Joe’s frozen food aisle. From the turkey burgers and chili lime chicken burgers, to the salmon burgers and mahi burgers (which I like to complement with my favorite seafood seasonings or marinades), their frozen burger patty options are the truth!

Desserts: So, I’ve hated chocolate my entire life (Yes, I know it’s weird…), so I haven’t truly been able to enjoy all the amazing frozen desserts Trader Joe’s offers. However, their macarons, which are also found in the frozen aisle, are one of my all-time favorites. They’re $4.99 for a dozen and allow you to imagine yourself enjoying each bite in a quaint little pastry shop an hour outside of Paris. Don’t we need more food like this in our lives right now? Oui. Oui.

Tasty Yet Budget Friendly Wine : I first discovered Trader Joe’s in college when I was introduced to Charles Shaw wine, or ‘2 buck chuck’. Yes, for just $1.99, you could have your pick of a regular sized bottle of decent red or white wine. While my wine taste has evolved since then, Trader Joe’s still has a large collection of inexpensive, yet tasty wines that I enjoy.

Crazy Affordable Organic Fresh Produce: Another area where Trader Joe’s shines is their fresh produce. Not only do they have a good variety of items, but their organic and non-organic fruits and vegetables are also typically cheaper than their competitors. While there are some who say Trader Joe’s produce doesn’t stay fresh as long as other grocers, that hasn’t been my experience to-date.

Snacks and Munchies: It would take multiple posts to describe the variety of chips, popcorns, and dips Trader Joe’s offers, but here are my top 5 absolute must-haves:

Speculoos Cookie Butter: Think about buying a jar of peanut butter only to find out that someone replaced the peanuts with those delicious biscoff cookies they give away on Delta Airline flights. There are so many different ways to enjoy this finger-licking good spread, but my favorite is dripped over apple slices, or fresh strawberries

Restaurant Style Tortilla chips: I’d put Trader Joe’s restaurant style tortilla chips head-to-head against any other grocery store’s tortilla chips. Heat them up in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds and you’d swear they came straight out of your favorite Mexican restaurant.

Roasted Plantain chips: Delicious and a great snack for little people; can easily be paired with guacamole, queso, or any of your favorite dips

Spinach and artichoke dip: While this is technically in the frozen food aisle, I placed it here because it epitomizes the very essence of an appetizer or snack. Warm the dip up in the microwave per instructions on packaging, and garnish with grated parmesan. Serve with pita chips, tortilla chips, or crackers. It’s crazy delicious. Nothing more to say.

Rhubarb and Strawberry soda: So this isn’t a snack per se, but I couldn’t end our product list without shouting out one of my fizzy indulgences and the perfect addition to any mocktail or cocktail. It’s great by itself, and can be used to create a simplified twist on the strawberry mojito. Bottoms up!

Pricing

Beyond products, what makes Trader Joe’s value proposition so compelling, particularly during this time, are its prices. At most grocers, you have to pay a premium for quality; however, at Trader Joe’s, that isn’t always the case. You can easily get quality, uniqueness, and affordability all in one place, and often from one item. Why is that, you ask? 80% of Trader Joe’s products are made for its private label, which means their supply chain costs are much lower, allowing them to pass these cost savings on to consumers.

People

While their products and pricing help Trader Joe’s stand out amongst their competition, many would argue that their strongest attribute is their people. As a proud customer, I would describe Trader Joe’s culture in one word, community. From their friendly cashiers to their crew members passing out samples with a smile, they seem like they’ve cracked the code on how to keep their employees engaged, productive, and seemingly satisfied, which is increasingly comforting and pretty inspiring during times like these.

Safety Precautions

Products, pricing, and people have always been integral to Trader Joe’s value proposition; however, I’ve been extremely impressed by how thoroughly Trader Joe’s has adapted to our “COVID-19 new normal” with updated safety precautions. While all businesses are taking additional precautions to help ensure safety amid the constant threat of COVID-19, Trader Joe’s was one of the few grocery stores that made me feel like they’re taking the precautions because they genuinely care, and not as a check-the-box license to operate. I’m not sure if it’s the fact they limit the number of shoppers inside the store, have a strict separation of clean and used grocery carts, or the sight of crew members walking the aisles wiping down items, but they’ve created a level of safety/security that I’ve rarely felt in public since COVID-19 became a reality.

Path to Greatness

While Trader’s Joe’s value proposition is defined by a combination of superior quality, uniqueness, community, and affordability, for its entire history, Trader Joe’s has been a luxury reserved for the educated, privileged, and disproportionately white subset of America that happens to live in one of the high-income areas where the company sets up shop. But, what if Trader Joe’s opened stores in underserved communities of color, helping to combat the countless food deserts across this country? Not only would this provide families in these communities with access to quality, healthy, and affordable food, it would also provide earners in these communities with practical training on customer-centric management, operations and service. While it may sound a little crazy, if done right and in combination with other policies in support of their crew members’ safety and the broader fight for a more just future, Trader Joe’s could send a powerful message and show that they believe in and stand for something far bigger than just paper and green ink.

I’d like to close on a note of gratitude and action...

Trader Joe’s, I appreciate you. I appreciate your products. I appreciate your crew members, and I appreciate the fact that you’re not charging me an arm, leg, and kidney for a bag of avocados. Most of all, during a time when community and public spaces have become synonymous with danger and illness, I appreciate the added safety, communal solidarity and consciousness I felt when I walked into your store.

So Trader Joe’s, consider this a call to action. I implore you to share your shopping experience of empathy and dignity and demonstration of community and love with people who need it most: people living in food deserts across this country who don’t have access to healthy yet inexpensive organic produce and quick meal options; people who would tremendously value and benefit the jobs, skills and employee experience you offer, and people who, just like you and I, want simply to feel their lives, basic needs, and futures matter. During a time of unprecedented uncertainty and fear, you have a transformative opportunity to model a much-needed form of social innovation that pushes us forward as a country and society by championing equality and community. While it may sound idealistic, I believe we can help create a clearer path for these underserved communities to achieve a more just and hopeful future, one grocery store, one policy, and one person at a time.

So what do I need from you as a reader?

Support the fight to ensure equal access to quality nutritious foods by clicking here to sign a petition asking Trader Joe’s to make plans to open at least two stores in the next 18 months in underserved, minority communities.

If you know others who would value the information listed above and feel comfortable holding our corporations to a higher level of accountability for people over profits, then share this post and ask others to sign the petition.

If you enjoyed this post and would like more information on being intentional with your life, join my mailing list for updates and check out my posts on value and goal-based living, intentional self-care, childcare and development, and relationships.

#Trader Joes #The Strategic Mom #Groceries #Shopping

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makingscipub · 4 years

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Bubbles: A short history

Last week we heard a lot about bubbles, especially school bubbles and travel bubbles. This metaphor has been bubbling up for a while during the pandemic and I became curious about how and where it emerged.

Then I saw a tweet from Gareth Enticott which contained an article about New Zealand researchers who had come up with the concept of ‘bubble’. It was then taken up enthusiastically by Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister, and subsequently became a model for other countries. In this blog post I want to tell the story of how the bubbles spread. But, of course, this is only scratching the very surface…

A life-affirming idea

The article indicated by Gareth appeared in the Otago Bulletin Board – a news website maintained by the University of Otago. It says that “Dr Tristram Ingham, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine at the University of Otago, Wellington, developed the concept [of bubble] while advising the Ministry of Health on the COVID-19 response for the disability sector”.

What he and his co-workers wanted to do was to capture “the imagination of both the Prime Minister and the nation, and help[ed] frame life under Alert Levels 4 and 3 more positively”. This was the time when social/physical distancing became a new mode of life around the world, but as Ingham said: “We didn’t want at risk communities to be passive recipients of their fate. The methods had to be around empowering individuals and whānau [an extended family or community of related families who live together in the same area] to have control over their own life and situations for self-preservation.”

This empowering and life-affirmative aspect of ‘bubbles’ is something I hadn’t really appreciated until reading this article.

The familiarity of bubbles

But why bubbles? As Ingham pointed out: “Bubbles are a universally known concept, which could be made appealing to children or to people that didn’t have a public health background. They could think of a bubble as a fragile yet beautiful structure that has to be nurtured and preserved. And it introduced the concept of making sure you don’t burst your bubble.”

As we say in metaphor circles, bubbles are a rich and familiar ‘source’ domain that can be easily mapped onto an abstract ‘target’ domain, such as pandemic risk management, and lead to new ways of thinking, talking and acting.

As Peter Adams pointed out in an article for the University of Auckland: “We are very familiar with the behaviour of bubbles: they froth on the ocean, they slide down the dishes, and they glide by on those summer afternoons when children form them with detergent and plastic hoops. The use of bubbles here conjures up an image of me and my loved ones floating around inside a transparent membrane that separates my group out from others and protects us from unwanted intrusion.”

Viral bubbles

The concept went viral and spread around the world. I wanted to follow this spread a bit and therefore looked at the news database Nexis to see how it went. This was not easy, as ‘bubble’, even with ‘AND covid’ ‘OR coronavirus’ brought tens of thousands of hits. So I narrowed the search to ‘bubble AND social group AND covid OR coronavirus’ and that, finally, gave me 82 hits that I could look at in diachronic order. I also looked for ‘Jacinda Ardern AND bubble’ just to see when New Zealand first talked about this. And supplemented it all with some incidental finds on the internet….not the neatest search I have ever done!

Creativity and flexibility

Bubbles as metaphors have been around for a long time and have been used in various contexts, from rumours bubbling up, to the south sea bubble, to social media bubbles which, we are all told, are not good for us. However, in the context of the pandemic, bubbles became more ‘real’ in a sense. Bubbles came to stand for what some call ‘micro-communities’ (Indian Express June 5, 2020).

Here is one visual representation I found, probably originating in China, but I can’t find the artist and here are many more.

The word bubbles attracted lots of other words and so we got : social bubbles, quarantine bubbles, home-bubbles, iso-bubbles (Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June), travel bubbles, bubbles mates, support bubbles, school bubbles, year-group bubbles, class bubbles – even quaranteam as a synonym for bubble, invented in March by a British couple quarantining in South Korea (Mirror, 7 March). In the United States, a synonym of bubbles was ‘pods’, it seems, although it seems that the concept, although spreading informally, was never part of a formal policy, as it was in other countries more keen on social distancing and isolation.

It should also be stressed that bubbles do not only encourage linguistic creativity, they are also flexible and adaptive enough to allow for changing uses over time. As an article in Slate pointed out on 6 May: “What makes the bubble idea an effective communication tool is not just its simplicity but also its ability to morph along with changing regulations. As New Zealand now moves into a lighter stage of restrictions, the concept of the bubble is adjusting with it. Under the more relaxed alert Level 3, New Zealand authorities are allowing bubbles to slowly open.”

Let’s start at the beginning.

March

The end of March, when New Zealand went into strict lockdown, seems to have been the time when bubbles first became a thing in New Zealand. As Peter Adams described in his article from which I already quoted above: “On March 23, when declaring the lockdown, Ardern said, ‘We have a window of opportunity to break the chain of community transmission.’ Her reference to ‘windows’ and ‘chains’ make use of common metaphors, perhaps too common to register specifically in our minds. However, in her next daily briefing she floated another more specific metaphor. We heard her encourage us to, ‘stick to your bubble,’ and ‘you can’t spend time with other people outside of your bubble’. […] By whatever process Ardern and her team came up with the bubble metaphor, during the course of the next two months it has proved a very effective way of communicating some key understandings.”

We now know by what process they came up with the concept! Let’s now look more closely at how it spread through time and space.

It seems that ‘bubbles’ first appeared in the news in an article on 24 March in The New Zealand Herald quoting Jacinda Ardern. At the same time, in a complementary article, one of New Zealand’s foremost pandemic communicators, Dr Siouxsie Wiles, answered questions (she also produced the imaged featured above, which is part of a famous gif).

The article said: “She reiterated Jacinda Ardern’s words of seeing our household ‘as our bubble’ and stay within that bubble. Wiles says there are exceptions to the ‘one household, one bubble’ guideline, such as parents with shared custody of children. Those two households can be considered one bubble.… You can help people out but ‘do not enter their bubble’. The exception is for people who live alone, who can have a ‘buddy system’ set up with someone else who lives alone. They can enter each other’s ‘bubbles’.”

Like ‘lockdown’, ‘bubbles’ are rooted in the conceptual metaphor of a ‘container’. A container metaphor is an ontological metaphor in which some concept is represented as having an inside and an outside, and as capable of holding something else. But bubbles and lockdown are quite different, of course. Lockdown conjured up images of prison, entrapment and house arrest, of crime and punishment, while bubbles conjure up images of (fragile) protection, responsibility and mutual support. Both play an important role in the ‘containment’ of a pandemic disease.

April

On 5 April, when Boris Johnson was admitted to hospital with Covid-19, bubbles were talked about in The Guardian here in the UK: “Before the lockdown, Ms Ardern asked Kiwis to ‘apply common sense’ and shrink down their social group to ‘a small group of individuals who are part of your bubble… the bubble you must maintain’ for the month.” That article was reproduced in many newspapers which also reported on a New Zealand ‘bonk ban’….

On 15 April, the MailOnline used the concept when listing 275 ways of slowing the spread of the virus devised by a team at the University of Cambridge: “’Focus on constraining ‘long connections between people in different social groups who seldom or rarely interact (e.g. people with a shared hobby or interest rather than short connections between people in similar social groups who regularly interact with one another (e.g. close family, colleagues, close friends),’ the report authors write. They go on to suggest governments might ‘Ask people to identify their bubble – being everyone they live with or must have contact with during ‘lockdown’- and ask people to stay as much as possible within their bubble, ‘a piece of advice they apparently borrowed from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. ‘Making this happen will be up to the people responsible for every element of society,’ said Professor Sutherland.”

From end of April bubbles appeared in newspaper headlines, and puns emerged around ‘burst bubbles’ etc. The concept was becoming mainstream in the UK, Canada, the US, Belgium etc. but with varying degrees of formal or policy endorsement. The small sample of articles I looked at did not contain any press coverage from the United States.

May

In early May, when bubbles became more and more popular, various disadvantages of bubbles were discussed, for example, interestingly, on Fox News (3 May): “MCDOWELL: …The Belgian government is toying with an idea that can help limit the pandemic. It would allow people to form social bubbles of 10 people maximum, no overlapping with other groups. … GUTFELD: This is a bad idea because it’ll cause social signaling. Like oh, hey, guys, I can’t see you tonight. I’m in Bret Baier’s bubble. […] You know, everybody’s going to be humble bragging about what bubble they’re in. And then how do families divvy up a bubble if you got like three kids. It’s going to be a new kind of disaster, domestic strife.”

There were some social dilemmas around bubbles, as discussed in the New York Times, but I don’t think it was as bad as that.

June

On 5 June The Telegraph (again, one should add, interestingly!) even wrote about how to decline a bubble invitation: “Those who dreamt up the idea of social bubbles clearly had no consideration for the chaos that would ensue. ‘If you decline to be in someone’s social bubble, you run the risk of not being included in anyone’s social group,’ says Harrold. ‘If an offer comes along, and it’s people you feel comfortable with, you’ve got to accept it.’ He advises that it can be helpful to think of the social bubble as an official contract; sign up, try it out, and leave if it’s not working for you.”

June was the month when bubbles became mainstream. And empirical studies of bubbles were undertaken at the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

On Wednesday 10 June, Boris Johnson made an announcement that adults who lived alone would be allowed to form a “support bubble” with another household. However, it seems this was not a straightforward ‘we follow the science’ decision. As reported in The Guardian, scientists were ambivalent, it seems: “Other Sage documents point to the extreme concern scientists had about the introduction of social bubbles whereby households could meet up to form small social groups. In mid-May, the experts urged ‘strong caution’ over bringing in bubbles when other distancing measures had only just been lifted.”

There is thus a difference between New Zealand and the UK. In the former, bubbles were part of the lockdown policy right from the start, in the latter they were part of a gradual easing of lockdown policy. This was the case in most countries, such as Belgium and also Canada where people began to talk about ‘double bubbles’ in June. Even in Germany there was talk of ‘Blasen’ or ‘die Bubble’.

July

On 4 July, some people ‘celebrated’ ‘Independence Day’, when social distancing rules were substantially relaxed in England. People could go to pubs and restaurants, and bubbles became a literal reality, as in this picture of dining pods (and here is a different one featured by CNN; and and older version of a bubble tent in care homes in Germany)!

At the moment the following rules apply when going out for a drink, as reported by The Sun on 4 July: “Punters who meet indoors can only meet in groups of up to two households or support bubbles. Outdoor meet ups should only take place in groups of up to 2 households (or support bubbles), or a group of 6 people from any number of households.”

Bubbles, bubbles…

Since Jacinda Ardern first told New Zealanders to form their own bubbles, the bubble has gone the way of all good viral concepts. As Dr Ingham, it’s inventor, said: “We lost control of the narrative. What I think is quite interesting and ironic is that it seems to be being picked up internationally and a whole bunch of other academics are starting writing about what it means, and the symbology of it. In some cases, they are reading more into it than I even thought at the time.” So we now got meta-bubbles and this post is one of them, I am afraid to say.

Image: Wikimedia Commons, part of a gif by Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris

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