Wirecutter's Guide to Shopping at Trader Joe's

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Speaker 2 The whole tiki vibe was very intentional and was there like from the founding.

Speaker 2 He wanted to feel like a trading post, which, if you're from the West Coast, there is a very specific West Coast trading post where stuff would come from the East and would be repackaged and sold to folks in California.

Speaker 2 I'm Christine Seer-Clissette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Speaker 11 I'm Rosie Guerin. And you're listening to The Wire Cutter Show.

Speaker 2 Hi, Rosie.

Speaker 11 Hey, Kyra.

Speaker 12 So it's a bit weird, but Christine actually isn't with us today. I miss her.
I know.

Speaker 11 But it's nice to be with you.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We're going to have a fun one today.
Why?

Speaker 12 Because today we are talking about one of my favorite stores, at least for snacks and, I don't know, frozen foods.

Speaker 2 Trader Joe's.

Speaker 2 Love it.

Speaker 12 I'm actually embarrassed about how much I love Trader Joe's.

Speaker 11 You're not alone. I mean, maybe cult is a little too strong, but there's definitely a Trader Joe's hive.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 We love it.

Speaker 11 If you love it, you seem to really, really love it.

Speaker 12 Yeah, so we really wanted to stress that Wirecutter usually does not do this. We're not big fans of recommending one store, gush about one place, but TJ's is kind of its own unique thing.

Speaker 12 The people just want to know. They want to know what the best stuff is.
And so our colleagues wanted to give TJ's the wire cutter treatment, which is in-depth testing.

Speaker 12 So they actually recently did a taste test and they crowned 18 of their favorite Trader Joe's items from snacks to frozen foods to baked goods, just all the good stuff.

Speaker 11 Across dietary restrictions and limitations, because you and I both have them. For sure.
And so we've got Anthra Sinha, who is an associate writer on the kitchen team, in to talk Trader Joe's.

Speaker 12 All the things, how she decided what to test and how they narrowed down 18 picks out of what feels like thousands.

Speaker 11 And also just how the store works and how it exists in the United States, who owns it.

Speaker 2 There's some good stuff in that piece.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to her.

Speaker 12 So we're going to take a quick break and then when we're back, we're going to talk with Anthra about all of the best tips and tricks that she's learned in reporting for this guide.

Speaker 2 Plus a little taste test. Woo!

Speaker 11 See you soon.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back.

Speaker 12 With us now is Antra Sinha, who is an associate staff writer on the kitchen team. So, previously, she was writing for Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, and Cooking Light.

Speaker 2 And she has eight years of experience writing about food and drink and culture and she's a really really big fan of ice cream i love that for you my nickname that self-imposed nickname was on the ice cream correspondent at one of my previous jobs what amazing what's your ice cream of choice when you're out in the world always a chip witch number one like an ice cream fan yeah

Speaker 2 that's my go-to yep so a chocolate chip cookie with ice cream yep and then another wow yeah go to it's always like a slice of pizza even a bad one is good wow big bold well welcome to the wire cutter show everybody thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 We're talking about Trader Joe's today. So let's talk.

Speaker 11 It's pretty unusual for the kitchen team at Wirecutter to write an entire guide just on one store. So how did you decide to do this? Where did this come from? How did it all come about?

Speaker 2 Me and my editors, we were actually very mindful and had a lot of conversations of like, what about Trader Joe's kind of warrants this singular coverage in a way that we don't do other supermarkets.

Speaker 2 And one is the fact that it is a national supermarket that has a huge, I say fan base, but customer base is what I really mean. Fan base as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 And then also they do kind of inhabit this very unique spot of the sort of ingredients that they sell, the type of products that they sell, introducing a lot of folks to new flavors and their national cuisines.

Speaker 2 And that feels very kind of unique. And we want it to give folks an idea of what's worth their money, what's worth making a trek out for.

Speaker 12 I feel like on my TikToks at least, and maybe this is just confirmation bias because it's how I also feel.

Speaker 2 The algorithm.

Speaker 12 Yeah, you know, feeding me what I want to hear. But I always see people on TikTok kind of jokingly complaining that Trader Joe's isn't a real grocery store.

Speaker 12 Like they, they don't, to me, seem to have the best fresh ingredients, but people love them for their frozen foods and like they're really specialty snacks.

Speaker 12 But you still have to go to a real grocery store after you do a TJ's run. So going back to your like fan-based clientele, what is the real appeal with Trader Joe's?

Speaker 12 What are people actually getting out of it?

Speaker 2 I actually am of the same camp.

Speaker 2 This is my take is that their produce is actually not maybe the best compared to locally sourced produce at your other supermarket, but I think it's relatively affordable.

Speaker 2 That's a huge plus, which we'll kind of get into all the reasons why. And they also do repackage quote-unquote unfamiliar foods, trending foods in a way that's comfortable, palatable.

Speaker 2 And to the point of it not feeling like a a real grocery store. I think that's because when you go into a broader supermarket, you have 10 options for one thing.

Speaker 2 And Trader Joe's whole business model really relies on we have one spaghetti and this is the spaghetti that you have to get. I didn't even think about that.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So like, think of like, if you go to, I'm a Florida girl, Publix is my number one

Speaker 2 point of reference. But you have a whole aisle that's just granola bars versus you go to Trader Joe's and there's maybe two or three to pick from.
And their aisles literally aren't that tall.

Speaker 2 You see all your options in one glance. Huh.
I never thought about that either.

Speaker 11 Okay, so let's take it back, back to the founding. So who is the titular Joe? What is the story? Who owns Trader Joe's now? Where did it come from?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so Joe Coulomb in the 60s basically was trying to reinvigorate a failing convenience store, essentially. And it started off being a place to sell cheap wine to becoming a place to to sell

Speaker 2 his whole ethos was to sell food for the overeducated and underpaid, which is a very loaded phrase. And you can interpret that in the many ways that you wanted to.

Speaker 12 We're both squinting. Yeah, the people who can't see Rosie and I.

Speaker 2 Well, it's interesting because this was in the 60s.

Speaker 2 And I feel that a lot of food currently still, the way that it's marketed to people, follows a very similar sort of dog whistling to the type of foods that we make palatable for different types of folks.

Speaker 2 So the whole tiki vibe was very intentional and was there like from the founding.

Speaker 2 He wanted to feel like a trading post, which if you're from the West Coast, there is a very specific West Coast trading post where stuff would come from the East and would be repackaged and sold to folks in California.

Speaker 2 And so anyway, now it's owned by Aldi, but it's owned by Aldi? It is. But we're getting kind of into the weeds here.
It's owned not by the Aldi that we're familiar with.

Speaker 2 We can get into the great Aldi schism of Germany, but that's, I don't know if we have the time for that, but it's owned by Aldi Nord, it's different from Aldi Sued, which is what we have in the U.S.

Speaker 2 But yes, it is owned by an Aldi. And I don't think that you see too much of that influence.

Speaker 2 It still operates pretty independently, and it's, it is a very specific American aesthetic and American appeal.

Speaker 11 Right. So to that end, you sort of described the aesthetic and the ethos as like kind of like California.
It sort of does feel like 60s energy.

Speaker 11 It's like the surfer dude vibe. Another thing that I think most people notice, I certainly do, when going into a Trader Joe's, is that everyone seems really happy.

Speaker 2 So why?

Speaker 2 I think it's really intentional in their sort of trading.

Speaker 2 They really want Trader Joe's to feel like your local market and a place where you're a regular and you're visiting your local market and it's enmeshed in your community.

Speaker 2 And I think you can even see this in the buildings that Trader Joe's chooses.

Speaker 2 So there's a Trader Joe's underneath the Queensborough Bridge, which is in this historic space. It's very much, if you live on the upper east side of Manhattan, it is part of your everyday geography.

Speaker 2 And to very intentionally choose that as the place for a Trader Joe's, it is making a statement that we want this to feel like it's enmeshed in your community.

Speaker 2 But I would also argue that it's kind of difficult to shop local if you're shopping at a Trader Joe's in a way that, you know, you have so many more local options in your community as well.

Speaker 11 Another aspect of Trader Joe's is you walk through, you see these items that are imported. I think you mentioned back in the founding in the 60s, it was the idea was to make quote unquote foreign or

Speaker 2 unfamiliar

Speaker 11 foods, quote unquote, palatable to folks who haven't maybe experienced them before. So you walk in today, you sometimes see Trader Jose,

Speaker 11 which I

Speaker 2 still do that.

Speaker 11 I think is more of a message.

Speaker 2 It's a little bit of a controversy.

Speaker 2 People really pushed back on them in 2020 for supposed racist overtones of this branding, and they said that they weren't doing it anymore, but I think that they meant that they weren't going to do it for new products.

Speaker 2 And so a lot of the original products still carry some of that original Trader Giato's, Trader Jose's on the packaging.

Speaker 11 Sort of implying that it's perhaps an Italian-type dish or a, you know, nondescript Latin American type dish. So, what I'm really asking is, who is making the food that exists at Trader Joe's?

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a lot to kind of get into here because Trader Joe's has a very specific model that kind of what makes it what it is.

Speaker 2 They rely on co-packing and co-manufacturing, which honestly, most supermarkets do.

Speaker 2 The difference is that Trader Joe's, if you walk into it, you realize that 80% of the things on the shelves have a Trader Joe's label on it compared to a Publix or a Costco or a Target where it's kind of half and half or 80-20 in the opposite direction.

Speaker 12 Can you break down what co-packing and co-manufacturing is?

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 2 So co-packing is essentially when you have a brand, it could be a big brand like PepsiCo or a smaller brand make the food for you and it's then taken to someone who packages it and labels it with the person who's getting it supplied from the food manufacturer.

Speaker 2 Honestly, a lot of brands operate like this because you realize that the branding of an item is kind of a huge cost.

Speaker 2 And so that's how Trader Joe's actually also makes things so cheap is because majority of the stuff is in-house. In-house and labeling, but the food is coming from other manufacturers.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's really interesting.

Speaker 12 Like when I covered mattresses, I went to factories and I saw that.

Speaker 12 A lot of mattress companies are like producing mattresses and then they're just slapping like a different brand on top, but it's all the same manufacturer.

Speaker 12 So at Trader Joe's, items are made by a separate company and rebranded with the TJ's name and logo. So you might also hear it called white labeling.

Speaker 2 Is that right? For sure. White labeling, private labeling, they're all kind of related practices with minor differences, but that's kind of the gist of Trader Joe's whole business model.

Speaker 11 So, okay, one of the things I like from Trader Joe's is the miso paste that comes in that little plastic pouch.

Speaker 11 So take that as an example and take it through the process of how it ends up at a Trader Joe's.

Speaker 2 Okay, so for Miso, Trader Joe's builds a relation with a Miso manufacturer. This could be a well-known Miso brand, or it could be a small Miso company that has no kind of public-facing branding.
Okay.

Speaker 2 They take that Miso and have a relationship with a co-packer, which will then package it with Trader Joe's branding. Okay.
And this helps cut costs in a few ways.

Speaker 2 Basically, there's also something called Slotting Bees, which is a brand like I keep using PepsiCo because it's the biggest company I can think of.

Speaker 2 As an example, as an example, at a normal grocery store, they have to pay a slotting fee, which is a one-time payment to even put any of their products on the shelves.

Speaker 2 And that's also what ups the price of the product because they have a one-time huge fee they have to pay a Publix or a Target.

Speaker 2 Because products for Trader Joe's are private labeled, there's no slotting fee that keeps the cost down. Oh.

Speaker 12 Another big part of this store's lore is that you can go into a store on any given day and one of your favorite things might be discontinued forever.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 12 Why? Why do they do this? Is it on purpose?

Speaker 2 It is on purpose. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 It's the ire.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, this all kind of goes back to how they keep their products so cheap.

Speaker 2 Going back to slotting fees, because they aren't getting sort of the one-time fee of a brand paying to put their product on the shelf.

Speaker 2 It's really expensive to keep the store stocked with something if it even dips a little bit in sales.

Speaker 2 And so it's in their benefit to have this high turnover, constantly have new hyped, like, you know, the pumpkin spice sweet that

Speaker 2 comes to light like every single August or early and earlier every year, it feels like. It's in their benefit to have this rapid turnover.

Speaker 2 It's really expensive to keep a product stocked on shelves year-round.

Speaker 12 So it's cheaper for them to just cut it and move on to the next thing.

Speaker 2 Move on to the next next trend, the next fad, the next

Speaker 2 trending food combination.

Speaker 12 Anybody from Trader Joe's who is a part of that decision-making process, if you cut my rose toner, I'm going to lose it.

Speaker 2 I've used that toner for like eight years straight. Scary.

Speaker 2 But here's what happens: that with that rapid turnover, it also keeps folks coming back because there is the sort of feeling of intrigue, of discovery every time you walk into the store.

Speaker 2 That's very much part of their aesthetic.

Speaker 11 That's really what gets me too. I am, what would you call it?

Speaker 12 I don't know how to say it nicely.

Speaker 2 Adventurist. I'm an adventure shop.

Speaker 11 She's a good person.

Speaker 2 I like to go into the store with an open mind rather than a list. No, me too.

Speaker 11 Trader Joe's is the perfect place for that.

Speaker 2 Yeah. They're in your brain.

Speaker 11 I didn't see that last time. Let me try that.

Speaker 12 It is kind of similar to, I love going to other countries. And one of my favorite things is just to go into the grocery stores and see what's up.
Absolutely.

Speaker 12 I get that exact same feeling when I'm going to Trader Joe's. So, yeah, they're doing something right.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it's very curated.
These decisions are very much, they're not just pulling them out of nowhere.

Speaker 2 They, like every grocery store, they're looking at what flavors people are really looking to right now. Like I just checked today and they already have their Dubai chocolate dupe on shelves.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I'm sure they were on their game months ago. Wow.

Speaker 11 So it's trends and seasonality. Yes.

Speaker 12 Do you have any advice for shopping for your favorite things at Trader Joe's? Because I just feel like it is hard to find things that you like in stock all the time.

Speaker 12 What is your best advice for buying your favorite things at Trader Joe's all year round?

Speaker 2 For

Speaker 2 something that's sort of like a frozen item, you should just stock up when you see it if you have the space in your freezer. If, you know, frozen rice packets are how you build your meals out.

Speaker 2 Although I doubt they would discontinue something basic like that. Well,

Speaker 2 you say that now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, definitely stock up. I would also really like to encourage people, because of so much of Trader Joe's portfolio really does rely on quote unquote international foods, things that are unfamiliar.

Speaker 2 The thing is that a lot of those items are available, maybe even in your own neighborhood, if you go to an Asian market or if you go to a South Asian market, a Latin American market.

Speaker 2 So for example, one of our picks in this guide is the frozen kimbop. Kimbop is this Korean dish where it looks almost like sushi.

Speaker 2 It's seaweed wrapped around rice, usually wrapped around some assortment of fish, seafood, vegetables, whatever you want.

Speaker 2 I think it's excellent, but I also know for a fact that if you go to an H mart, there's 10 types of frozen kimbop.

Speaker 2 And if you love something enough that you want to kind of be more exploratory about it, for sure, check out those other places.

Speaker 11 We're going to take a quick break, and when we're back, we're going to reveal Anthra's hottest tip to finding out the companies that actually manufacture Trader Joe's products.

Speaker 11 And we're also going to taste some stuff.

Speaker 12 Live taste test, live taste test.

Speaker 11 Stick around.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back.

Speaker 11 Our guest today is Anthra Sinha, an associate staff writer on the kitchen team here at Wirecutter.

Speaker 11 She wrote an article for the site entitled, Our Favorite Things from Trader Joe's, which I think is pretty self-explanatory.

Speaker 11 Antra, in your piece, you wrote, quote, in our pursuit of Trader Joe's best offerings, we tasted over 70 of its frozen, refrigerated, bakery, and pantry items.

Speaker 11 Many didn't beat out similar products from other grocery stores, but some items were so tasty and convenient that now they're appearing in our own shopping carts.

Speaker 11 So anyone who's been to a Trader Joe's knows they have hundreds, if not thousands of products.

Speaker 11 However did you decide where you and the team were going to begin, what to test, and what was that testing process like?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we had a few meetings about how we wanted to organize this. It's definitely very daunting because it's a whole grocery store.
There's a lot of things to look at.

Speaker 2 I went today to purchase some stuff for this taste test and I was like, oh no, there's a whole new shelf of new arrivals. I have to have to take a picture for future coverage.

Speaker 2 And it's, I imagine, a lot of pressure because people love

Speaker 11 what they love there.

Speaker 2 Exactly. So, our first sort of place to winnow it down a little bit was that we eliminated what we kind of put this broad category of ingredients.

Speaker 2 So, basically, whatever we would want to test independently, like in a best butter guide or in a best ketchup guide, we left those items out. So, that eliminated quite a bit.

Speaker 2 We also chose not to test fresh and fresh prepared products because there's so much store-to-store variance, there's so much sourcing variance, and we also kind of were under the assumption that if you're a regular Trader Joe's shopper, we can't tell you if the bananas are, you know, the best bananas or the worst bananas.

Speaker 2 So that definitely made the store a little bit smaller. And then from there, we went department by department.

Speaker 2 And for the most part, we tried to keep our first round of coverage for this guide, things that are available year-round.

Speaker 2 But that's tough because already there are things that I want to purchase that are not available anymore.

Speaker 2 It literally involves my editor and I walking around Trader Joe's with our camera in hand and taking pictures of the aisles that we wanted to focus our coverage on.

Speaker 2 And so that kind of narrowed us down to frozen items, to snacks, to baked goods, which I think is kind of where the cult of Trader Joe's is most excited about to begin with. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So it was a fun process a lot of cheese a lot of a lot of

Speaker 2 okay so then you picked what you picked and then was it you eating all of these things absolutely not that's so much food i mean even so for this guide i was pretty fortunate where the majority of our team so like eight plus of us were able to taste test these products we did over five days multiple hours of testing a lot of them you know we tried to kind of group them in an intentional way so our first day we made ourselves a fun little charcuterie spread with cheese and crackers and meat and had everyone just report on their favorites and what wasn't working for them.

Speaker 12 Your job is awesome.

Speaker 2 It was, it was a fun day. We also were like, let's do this after 4 p.m.
So it feels more like a little happy hour.

Speaker 2 And then another day we tried to focus on frozen snacks. So that's where the fun jalapeno poppers came in.
Toward the end, we were like, this is a lot of Trader Joe's to be eating in one stretch.

Speaker 2 But I feel pretty kind of happy with where we landed with. We had a wide range of perspectives in the mix too.
So I'm single, very much shopping for myself.

Speaker 2 And so the convenience foods I gravitate toward are different from an editor on our team who has kids and is very much looking to fill lunch boxes and populate snack time with stuff that she feels good about.

Speaker 12 What surprised you most during testing?

Speaker 2 I was honestly surprised by despite everyone's sort of varied palates and very different ways of grocery shopping, we were all able to kind of come together to a consensus on most items.

Speaker 2 Obviously, there's preferences of taste. Like I personally was not a fan of the caramelized cheese cheddar, but we had an editor on the staff who was really advocating for it as one of her favorites.

Speaker 2 But when it came to terms in terms of just quality and bang for your buck, it was pretty easy to come to a consensus.

Speaker 2 For example, the unexpected cheddar is one of our picks in the guide, and it's comparable in price to our best American cheese pick from a different guide.

Speaker 2 And that's, I think, a real value because you have a kind of special tasting cheese that you can put on a cheese board of the same value as your like craft singles.

Speaker 2 So that's, I felt like something that was worth calling out is if you're going to Trader Joe's, this is worth seeking out.

Speaker 11 And so then conversely, what did you hate?

Speaker 2 It was a truffle mousse pate.

Speaker 2 For folks who don't know what pate is, it's chicken liver.

Speaker 2 And I will say that we were really kind of hoping that this could be a great beginner pate to try like if you never had pate before why would that be a good beginner because it's well because it's available trust also like very polarizing it's pretty cheap so low buried entry okay for pate for pate it was not i mean it wasn't even just the flavor it was gritty it unanimously we were all not not a fan that was i'll tell you what i don't want trust gritty pate

Speaker 12 yes do you guys ever have like a 50-50 do you have to vote do Do you have to try and convince somebody to turn to the other side?

Speaker 2 How does that work? So the way that we do taste tests is that we get everyone sort of qualitative feedback on every item. So it's not just taste, flavor.

Speaker 2 It's also information like, how would you serve this? Would you go to Trader Joe's specifically for this item?

Speaker 2 And so we're usually able to get enough qualitative information where, okay, even if this wasn't this one person's absolute favorite, they did like the value add of this.

Speaker 2 They would, so it's really a conversation for every item of like, is it good? Is the quality good? Is it something that is a good bang for your buck?

Speaker 2 Is it something that you would go out of your way to purchase? And I think with all of those combined, we were able to make a strong case for every item on the list.

Speaker 12 Antra, did you ever discover some of the companies that are doing this private labeling for Trader Joe's? I need to know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so for this guide, we didn't intentionally sort of go into it as a way to sleuth like what suppliers Trader Joe's was using, but there's some really excellent reporting by Eater in 2017 where they FOIAed the FDA and the USDA for all recall information.

Speaker 2 So this is a really smart way to check for tricky. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So if there's a recall, for example, of big name potato chip company and it happens to coincide with the recall from Trader Joe's for that same potato chip, you can kind of make the educated guess that they're coming from the same manufacturer.

Speaker 11 That's called deductive reasoning.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Very Sherlock Holmes.

Speaker 2 It was kind of interesting because Trader Joe's does unfortunately happen to be in the news quite a bit for recalls and it's because they're using so many co-packers in this way. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so if you're curious about this, if you're really interested, you can just kind of follow recall information. Okay.
Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 12 I might because there are some things that they've never brought back, but I'm determined to find out where they sourced that from.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that also an important sort of distinction to make is that everyone thinks that you can just look at the ingredients.

Speaker 2 And usually what happens is that these big suppliers will tweak their ingredients for a Trader Joe's. So it's not quite as easy as a one-to-one comparison.

Speaker 2 So like the naked juice, for example, they use, I think, some spirulina in their green juice, but the green juice at Trader Joe's may not.

Speaker 2 And but, you know, you wouldn't know that unless you for sure knew that they were both from the same supplier.

Speaker 12 We're going to do the best part, which is a taste test.

Speaker 12 But before we start, I did want to know what your absolute favorite thing is from Trader Joe's, and it doesn't have to be anything that you put in this guide.

Speaker 2 Right. Well, to go back to the beginning, they're Chipwitch.
Excellent. Okay.

Speaker 2 What is your favorite thing from Trader Joe's that is not ice cream? Oh, man, that's tough. I have a pretty strong sweet tooth, so I'm such a sucker for like the baked goods.

Speaker 2 They're, you know, vanilla cake, their chocolate cake.

Speaker 2 The chocolate cake was one of our picks, and I literally had to like foist it off to other people because I'm like, don't let me take this whole cake home.

Speaker 2 It will be gone on the subway before I can even get to my apartment.

Speaker 12 I feel like this is an appropriate time for me to mention that the three of us have a really interesting Venn diagram of things that we can't eat.

Speaker 11 Yes. So this is why we're not testing the entirety of the store.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Because, well, when you narrow it down after meeting all of our dietary requirements, we have two things.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 11 I've got food allergies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You've got dairy allergies.

Speaker 2 You've got

Speaker 2 beef or pork. And I'm also allergic to walnuts and pecans.
There's two items on the guide, which honestly, I will say that like, There is something for everyone on this guide.

Speaker 2 And we made it an effort to really call out dietary restrictions in the guide as well.

Speaker 2 So if you're looking for kosher-friendly, dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan, we tried to do our best to really call those out for you. Yeah, you really do.

Speaker 12 Unless the three of us are ever in a room together again.

Speaker 2 Then we have two items.

Speaker 2 Let's get it. Let's go to dinner together.
Okay, let's eat.

Speaker 11 What did you bring for us?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So we have basically Trader Joe's version of Takis, which are these like flavored tortilla chips.
They're rolled. They're really...
like they're alarmingly red, very sour, very spicy.

Speaker 12 They have this like lime punch.

Speaker 2 They have a lime punch. It's the kind you want to like lick your fingers.
But all this to say, these Takis aren't quite at a 10.

Speaker 2 They're like at a mellow six, but still punchy and flavorful and excellent. And then the second item that we have is the frozen kimbop that I kept talking about.

Speaker 2 It's this Korean dish where it's rolled veggies.

Speaker 2 There's some tofu in here, burdock root in here, and it's a really convenient packaging, which a lot of folks on our team were big fans of because it's a very quick workplace lunch snack for your kids.

Speaker 2 It fills a lot of buckets. And it's also vegan, so we can all share and enjoy it together.

Speaker 2 All right. What are we going to taste first? Maybe let's do the frozen kimbop first.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We all were big fans of this.

Speaker 11 All right, let's give it a little cheeky taste. Okay.

Speaker 2 Smells good.

Speaker 12 I love a little meat sushi, but this one's just tofu.

Speaker 2 It's good. It's like a little bit fishy.

Speaker 11 The tofu is almost like the tofu skin, like an Inari type tofu skin, delicious.

Speaker 12 But you get a little crunch. What is that, like from a carrot?

Speaker 2 A carrot, maybe.

Speaker 12 I see something green there, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's some veggies in here. There's some burdock root in here.

Speaker 2 This tastes really nice. It has like a mellow sweetness to it that we all really liked.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 It kind of feels like a whole lunch in like one tiny snack. You get a little rice, you get a little veggie, you get a little quote-unquote meat.

Speaker 2 Oh, there's the crunch. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One of our editors, their favorite hack is to take these while they're frozen and kind of roll them in some whisked egg and then pan-fry them.

Speaker 2 And that kind of makes it into even more of a complete meal with your added protein from the eggs.

Speaker 12 So oh, I'm doing that immediately.

Speaker 2 My kids eat like that, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 12 I would eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Speaker 2 All right, what else are we testing? These are rolled corn tortilla chips, chili and lime flavored. Yeah.
Doesn't roll off the tongue. Not quite as much as Takis, but here.

Speaker 2 Go ahead. These are like solidly beach snack territory for me, even though they would part you out, but I think that's kind of the fun of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like

Speaker 2 ASMR of us chewing tortilla chips. It's like

Speaker 2 it just hits you.

Speaker 12 It's just, it tastes like a really savory, but, but limy tortilla chip.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's very punchy.

Speaker 12 And it's, it's rolled into this fun little, what is this, like a straight Cheeto?

Speaker 11 You know what I like about this shape is that you get so much of the seasoning on it you know it's like a regular triangle shaped tortilla chip yeah you might get less on the top a little more on the bottom yeah a little more on one side or the other this is just it's coated dredged yeah yeah in chili lime and then your fingers are dredged and it's like a whole it's so satisfying though it's so satisfying you know when i'm usually eating like tortilla chips regular ones I find myself digging through the bag looking for the ones that look like they have the most seasoning on them.

Speaker 2 You never have to do that with these.

Speaker 2 Delish.

Speaker 2 They're a real, I think, crowd favorite. We were all big fans of this one.
All right. Well, we've tasted, we've talked to Trader Joe's.

Speaker 11 The real question is, when are you doing this for Costco?

Speaker 2 Oh, man. God, can you imagine a whole warehouse of...

Speaker 2 They'll take you. We have been talking about, okay, we've done Trader Joe's.
What are other sort of national supermarkets that weren't the same degree of coverage?

Speaker 2 And if you talk about brand loyalty, the people love Costco. The people love Costco.

Speaker 11 It's in the zeitgeist and it has been for a long time.

Speaker 2 You need like a 10-part series for that. Absolutely.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 All right. Well, till then.

Speaker 12 Before we wrap, we always ask our guests one final question. So, Antara, what is the last thing you bought that you really loved?

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 I'm trying to think. I recently bought Onitsuka sneakers.
Ooh.

Speaker 2 Which they're these Japanese brand. They're of the same sort of genres, like the Sambas, the gazelles, or like flat walking shoes, but I wore them on vacation and I love them.

Speaker 2 They're like a fun pop of color. They are teal.

Speaker 2 Are you wearing them right now? I am wearing them right now.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.
Okay. Very nice.

Speaker 12 I am familiar with this brand. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Antra Sinha, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really fun.
I feel educated. I feel satiated.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel happy. Happy.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much for having us. It was so much fun.

Speaker 2 Wow. I could listen to Anthra talk all day.
She's just so knowledgeable.

Speaker 11 She had all the answers.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 12 Who knew that there was so much to know about Trader Joe's?

Speaker 11 I hoped there was a lot to learn about Trader Joe's, and I think we were right.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 11 What are you taking away from this episode?

Speaker 12 Well, first of all, kind of weird that there's actually a dude named Joe.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 That was a guy.

Speaker 12 I love it. I think that my biggest takeaway is how they keep their food so affordable.

Speaker 12 I didn't even think about the way that they don't have to worry about stocking the shelves because the shelves are filled with... products with their name on it.

Speaker 12 So they're not paying that really high stocking fee when they're putting a new product on the shelves.

Speaker 11 It's definitely a unique business model.

Speaker 11 I think for me, having some explanation of how it is that certain items I fall in love with aren't there, you know, the next time I go, that was helpful to understand.

Speaker 11 I think also understanding the behaviors around why I might go to Trader Joe's for snacks or dry goods or some frozen things, but then maybe go somewhere else or somewhere more local for my produce.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Not that I needed to be absolved of that, but it just was helpful to understand why that might be.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it makes sense. And I do feel a little bit better because I have been mocked for wanting to go to separate grocery stores for different things.

Speaker 11 No, Kyrie, you're perfect.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 11 If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage or if you want to check out any of the products Anthra mentioned today, you can check out our website or you can find a link in our show notes.

Speaker 11 Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 12 The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman.
Today's episode was mixed by Sophia Landman.

Speaker 12 Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Baeptoup, Catherine Anderson, Rowan Nimisto, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager.

Speaker 12 Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's Editor-in-Chief.

Speaker 2 I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Sear Clissette.

Speaker 11 And I'm Rosie Guerin.

Speaker 12 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 If I bring up Chipboach again, will I I get banned? Yeah. Yeah.

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