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Recently, on my way to the register at my local Trader Joe’s, I saw buckets of beautiful white tulips that were on sale for $6 for ten. 99.
It’s not often that I buy flowers, but the tulips seemed like a good idea since I had guests over for dinner and my yard wasn’t full of flowers.
Five of the stems went limp when I cut open the plastic bag for the tulips at home. These poor, beautiful things couldn’t be saved, and they fell around the vase’s edge like tired ballerinas.
I’ve been shopping at Trader Joe’s regularly for more than two decades—a span spread across three different cities. I won’t buy some things anywhere else because I think TJs has the best value and quality. They can be very helpful for people who live in smaller cities where it may be hard to find ethnic foods. And Consumer Reports ranks Trader Joe’s highest of all national chains in terms of customer satisfaction. Arriving home and discovering you have a shoddy product is a real bummer.
But not everything at Trader Joe’s is a dream buy. Though often temptingly packaged, there are a few categories I’ve learned to avoid.
In the company’s defense, store managers are given latitude to refund or replace products without question. But if you’re counting on something for tonight’s dinner, like the tulips for my table, getting home and finding a bad product is a real letdown.
Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
Fresh fruits and vegetables are now available at most stores in the chain, even though they weren’t there when I first started shopping there. But, as I’ve learned more often than I’d like to say, a lot of the food at Trader Joe’s is obviously flawed, and almost none of it comes from nearby farms.
Excess packaging often conceals the quality of produce at Trader Joes.
To begin, the quality isn’t always good. Tomatoes that don’t taste good, peaches that are rock hard, and blackberries that are moldy show up more often than they should. The products often spoil faster than the same items bought elsewhere. Problems that might normally be detected by simply examining the items are often masked within the packaging. Also, the packaging is too much—most of the food is in plastic clamshells or trays, which means that these items are sold with a bigger environmental impact than they need to have.
Even though Trader Joe’s is known for having great deals, some of the food is either too expensive or needs to be bought in too large of quantities. The price per pound for zucchini might be fair, but who needs five at once unless they’re making zucchini bread? Also, $1 for two small garlic bulbs in a package? 29 is a scam because at most regular supermarkets you can get two or three times as many for the same price. Even though Trader Joe’s is known for having great deals, some of the food is either too expensive or needs to be bought in too large of quantities.
Trader Joe’s keeps its checkout lines moving faster by selling items in units instead of pounds. This is because there is no need for scales to weigh produce. But the business should give these cost savings to customers (this happens more often at Costco, by the way).
Still, there are exceptions. Bagged, pre-washed salad greens seem as tasty and fresh as what I get elsewhere. Some items are only available during certain times of the year and are of good quality and value. One week it might be globe artichokes and the next week it might be ears of corn. And at just 19 cents apiece, the bananas are a loss leader I never pass up.
Fresh Seafood and Sushi
A few years ago, Trader Joe’s earned a black eye from seafood watchdogs for selling seafood that was not sustainably sourced. Today, the chain gets a thumbs-up on the Greenpeace scorecard among retailers for its sales practices.
Though sustainably sourced, overall quality of Trader Joes seafood is unreliable.
But I don’t find a lot of the fresh seafood at Trader Joe’s to be appealing. I’ve had salmon caught in the ocean that tasted cloudy, scallops that were soaked in water, and sushi that was full of fake fish and other non-Japanese ingredients. “Sell-by” dates are often meaningless.
With the fish being sealed in plastic and no one at the fish counter to talk to, we never know where or when the fish came from. You won’t find any sales when a big shipment comes in like you would at Whole Foods, Wegmans, or Sprouts. Again, the same goes for fresh meats. However, I trust Trader Joe’s beef, lamb, and chicken more. You won’t find any sales when a big shipment comes in like you would at Whole Foods, Wegmans, or Sprouts.
That said, I don’t avoid most of the frozen or canned seafood items sold at Trader Joe’s. The frozen tilapia fillets are a great deal at $6.99 a pound, and the chain deserves praise for its affordably priced, canned skipjack tuna, sustainably caught through pole and line fishing.