Grocery Wars: Trader Joe's

Trader Joe’s: home of Hawaiian shirts, free samples, lively decorations and delicious food. This grocery store is festive year-round, constantly making customers feel good with their comfortable environment and non-corporate feel. From their infamous Joe Joe cookies, to their Speculoos cookie butter, to their “Two Buck Chuck” wine, TJ’s has it all. Compared to Whole Foods, prices are significantly lower at TJ’s. Additionally, the quality of the food is much better at TJ’s. So why pay more to get less?As a regular visitor to TJ’s ever since I was a child, it’s a place that has my heart; one can’t help but charge for the samples table the second they walk through the sliding doors. Its tropical theme makes it a desirable place to shop for groceries. Everything in the store is something unique and fun, and each trip, I would ask for something new to experiment with and try out. The nostalgia I get each visit is something I wouldn’t trade, especially for TJ’s most notable competition: Whole Foods.Whole Foods’s steep prices, food and health propaganda and cold environment make it a shopping experience that I tend to avoid. Their whole spiel about being “organic” and “GMO-free” guilts customers into buy their drastically overpriced products. Simply getting salad or food from the hot food bar can go into the double digits. The store is deceiving and uses high-end appearance to up the prices. Just because you can make the peanut butter or almond butter yourself, does it mean that you should be paying tons extra for it? Definitely not. Do you really want to shop at a store that, last year, sold asparagus stalks submerged in glasses of water for six whole dollars? The burden of guilt you get when you walk out of Whole Foods realizing how much you just paid for a couple of basic products is not one that anyone wants to feel at all, and especially not when shopping regularly.In addition, if you just want to buy some Oreos to soothe your sweet tooth, Whole Foods is not the place for you. But don’t worry, they have a great substitute: why not a vegan, gluten-free, low sugar and low carb cookie that tastes like plain cardboard?Sure, Whole Food’s products are high-quality. It’s kind of fun to have 3,000 choices of French cheese. And, honestly, who can’t get enough of their fresh morning pastries? But, these perks are nothing compared to Whole Food’s weaknesses. On top of the quality of the food and their rational prices, TJ’s workers can become your best friend in one visit. They know you, and you know them. There is always someone right down the aisle you can ask for help, whereas in Whole Foods, you need to initiate a full-fledged search to hunt down a single worker.Trader Joe’s offers a grocery shopping experience that no one can compare to, especially Whole Foods. Although TJ’s is noticeably smaller, you will always, without fail, find what you’re looking for. After all, why would you want to shop at a store with rocketed prices and unsatisfactory food, when you can shop at the package deal of great food at great prices that is Trader Joe’s?