The Big Brands That Make Trader Joe's Products - Cheddar Explains

I love Trader Joe's, I love their almond and dark chocolate and of course all their amazing frozen meals are cheap too. I mean, where else can you get food that feels more natural and healthy at such low prices? In the last few decades alone, Trader Joe's has seen prolific growth in 1997, the chain had about 96 stores, today it has more than 500. Much of that success is due, at least in part, to the private label of Trader Joe's, the quality and unique options included. Trader Joe's brand Imagine my surprise when I started seeing articles linking some of Trader Joe's

products

to big food companies like Pepsi Co that supply every other standard grocery store, which got me thinking about who actually supplies the brand.

Trader Joe's brand and why Trader Joe's is so Secretly, I started this story like many others. I went to the Trader Joe's website, requested an interview and thought that when I get the information directly from the source, I never get a response and it turns out I'm not the only one who has had problems getting information from Trader Joe's. It's pretty standard in an industry where people don't reveal their private

brands

, but Trader Joe's takes it to the next level. Beth KO "is a senior editor at Fortune magazine who is written in depth about Trader Joe's, it was this company that people were obsessed with, but we didn't know much about them they are very secretive, they are masters, their MBAs are fierce and fluid , then there's Mark Gardiner as an advertising executive, he was so intrigued by Trader Joe's business, he took a $12 an hour job at his local store out of curiosity and then decided to write a book about it in 2012.

I started doing some research and the first thing I learned is that there are no, because of their secretive practices in finding out who supplies the Trader Joe's label, workarounds are needed. Marc found out about one of these solutions early on, so basically the only way. Where these secrets get lead is if there is a food recall or if there are lawsuits often Joe's Goods will have the same ingredients as an equivalent national brand and that is one way we can assume that who

make

s their

products

has limitations. The recall and demand method only shows companies that have supplied Trader Joe's in the past; those providers may have changed since then. and comparing ingredients can be complicated because experts say the company often requests slight modifications to products from suppliers or may list some of the ingredients differently despite these hurdles.

Beth was able to report that Stacy's pita chips made by Frito-lay, a division of the now $182 billion company PepsiCo had made Trader Joe's popular pita chips with sea salt. She also reported that Stonyfield Farm, then part of dairy giant Danone, supplied much of Trader Joe's stores on the East Coast, but it was the food site's consumer who really put these methods to work. and she compiled one of the most comprehensive articles, Trader Joe's Unlikely Suppliers. Vince Dixon wrote the article. One of our reporters with the idea of ​​using freedom of information requests to look and see how many of Trader Joe's products have been recalled at some point.

We filed their request with the FDA at the USDA, they asked for ten years' worth of recalls and eventually recovered pages of information about dozens of companies we already know about Stacy's pita chips, but it turns out other PepsiCo

brands

were supplied at Trader Joe's . - when you buy a shake from Trader Joe's it is the same shake that PepsiCo

make

s under the nude Vince's article also found that Tribe hummus and supplies to Trader Joe's - at the time, Tribe hummus was owned by Nestle a See the threads that connect some of these familiar Trader Joe's products to some of the world's most formidable corporate food players and it doesn't end there, it turns out that their pistachios , at least at one time, were made by a wonderful pistachio company, I thought.

Wonderful was kind of a small organic brand, but it's a roughly $5 billion company that offers brands including Fiji water and Pom juice. -name products, they found striking similarities between, for example, Tate's bait shop cookies and Trader Joe's crunchy chocolate chip cookies, noting nearly identical flavor and packaging. Tate's Bakery began as an independent company, but in 2018, after almost two decades of prolific growth, it was acquired. for $500 million by snack titan Mandalay International, which was spun off from Kraft Foods in 2012 and includes big household brands like Oreo Ritz Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Triscuits Eater also found similarities between two varieties of Trader Joe's Slim's pretzel and the most well-known snack.

The crunchy pretzel snack factory was part of Snyder's Lance think Kettle Chips, which by now you won't be surprised to know was acquired in 2018 by Campbell Soup Company and many of its brands migrated under the Campbell umbrella to coexist with other big names like the Milano goldfish. and SpaghettiOs, of course, the Trader Joe's label are not just mass suppliers, much of Trader Joe's success comes from being one step ahead of Americans, increasingly adventurous eating habits that they don't necessarily follow, the trends they really follow. brand, which in part means diversifying from the market. standard offerings you would find at other grocery stores and send representatives to look for smaller suppliers who can provide trendy products for Trader Joe's stores.

Suppliers have included companies operating from large organic applesauce manufacturers like Manzana Products, good to their startups like Wild Way. I made grain-free granola and, according to Marc, even in some little mom-and-pop shops when I work there, one of the things they sold was a frozen pizza that was actually made in Italy, frozen in Italy, and shipped to the United States, a of the things I mentioned that the product was a small family business in Italy and we buy everything they make, so why all the secrecy surrounding Trader Joe's suppliers? I mean, it's just a grocery store, well, it actually turns out there's something special about shopping there, I think.

One of the things that really attracts consumers is the sense of discovery, so being able to find items at Trader Joe's that you couldn't get anywhere else, they've created this whole elaborate Calton uniqueness, and even if that product sells . somewhere else it will look like this and it won't seem like the same product to you if it suddenly seemed less unique or if you started associating the feeling of discovery with tribal hummus, rocky field yogurt or a pure juice, it could hurt business from Trader Joe's. But why would big brands agree to allow their products to reinforce Trader Joe's image?

Well, there are a few reasons, but one of the biggest apparently is that brands are selling their products for less under the Trader Joe's label. In fact, Vince Dixon's dining article found him citing the cost of Trader Joe's products in our analysis, which are on average about 37% cheaper than brand-name versions. Suppliers don't want you to know that you can find those products and Trader Joe's because of course they waste money. If you're the person who essentially prefers big brands, you're hoping to enter a new market at Trader Joe's, people who wouldn't normally buy the brand at a standard grocery store, but would dump the same basic product under the Trader Joe's label at your cart because maybe Trader Joe's has a lower price or a healthier, more fun vibe, those suppliers probably don't want people to already buy their products at full price somewhere else: suddenly flooding Trader Joe's stores or, for On the other hand, lose that new market of Trader Joe's customers. because they discover that their new favorite item is made by a brand they wouldn't normally consider purchasing, and even by smaller suppliers who don't have a big presence and other stores agree to keep the relationship a secret so they can work with them.

Trader Joe's can have big advantages: suppliers do it because it's a really good business; They do tremendous volume with Trader Joe's. My reports show that they were a very good partner to work what they paid for on time and I think that is desirable for both the small manufacturers who are trying to increase their volume, but also some of the larger ones who simply want to have more scale Trader Joe's as well tends to avoid standard grocery industry practices like nickel and diming suppliers with all sorts of additional fees, retailers screw suppliers by mercilessly demanding oh there is a marketing feed and let's associate with this there are fees shelf if you don't want to be on the lowest shelf things are brutal in the grocery industry suppliers hate Trader Joe's doesn't do that another reason to keep secrecy around suppliers could be As Mark Gardner

explains

, the fun atmosphere, the extroverted employees and the nods to healthier foods create a kind of halo effect around the quality of the food, they play a rather sophisticated game in terms of similar claims and overreach, they see that everything in our store is completely natural, now natural. is a word that's basically a free-for-all from a food packaging trademark labeling regulations perspective, people go to Trader Joe's thinking, oh, it's all natural and then they throw it together like, well, isn't that all organic? really good for you, bursting that bubble could be problematic and the company is very successful in protecting it.

The company generates approximately thirteen billion dollars in revenue each year and analysts say that within its stores they make between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars per year. square foot to triple the amount a standard grocery store makes. Part of packing that value into every square foot is selecting a small number of specialty products under Trader Joe's private label that shoppers will love, so a fairly typical supermarket might have 50,000 units to let go of. so two different sizes of Tide detergent would be two different SKUs two different types of sticky and jiff peanut butter those are two different SKUs Trader Joe's four thousand sometimes even less depending on the season meaning the specific identity and combination of those SKUs is kind of like a trade secret for the company, something they don't want their competitors to find out about and copy.

It's no surprise that Trader Joe's keeps the identity of its suppliers a secret, but for all Trader Joe's fans from the US is still nice. It's fun trying to figure it out for ourselves, so next time you're at Trader Joe's keep an eye out for anything that looks suspiciously like something you've seen before and keep us posted on any good sightings in the comments. Other than that, thank you. To watch it, if you enjoyed the video, feel free to help us by liking and subscribing, and of course, if you want to stay up to date with the latest chat news, hit the bell next to the subscribe button.