Hunter: Organic food stores losing their glory

The first time I went to Trader Joe’s, I fell into some kind of embarrassing grocery… The first time I went to Trader Joe’s, I fell into some kind of embarrassing grocery infatuation. It was as if someone had been taking note of all the elite organic items I wistfully pushed my cart past in Giant Eagle and Whole Foods, gathered them up and plopped them down in one compact store, then removed the brand label and lowered the prices. Pure foodie heaven.

It wasn’t until the honeymooner euphoria ebbed that I started noticing that my crackers were triple-packaged and that — wait, my zucchini is in a package too? And why exactly is this organic tofu cheaper than its counterpart in Whole Foods? Is it just the generic factor, or is there something else going on here?

Until about a month ago, when Fortune magazine published the results of three months of journalistic probing of Trader Joe’s, I would’ve probably been answered by silence.

It turns out that, despite the exuberant employees and cartoon-like packaging, Trader Joe’s at the corporate level is a bit of a recluse. Its headquarters in Monrovia, Calif., bears no name or logo. The owners, the Albrecht family in Germany who also control Aldi, have a long-standing policy of secrecy as to their business practices.

According to Fortune, this is partly because Trader Joe’s doesn’t want its customers or competitors to know from whom it’s getting its products. Often they come from large brand names, like Pepsi and Stonyfield Farm, which sell to Trader Joe’s at lower prices because of its high turnover rate.

To achieve this, Trader Joe’s puts a lot of time into carefully choosing specialty products from around the world that will go over well with its customer base. It also cuts out middlemen by buying directly from manufacturers and shipping to its own conveniently placed distribution centers.

Trader Joe’s then stocks its shelves with items that make up only about 8 percent of the amount of products at other grocery stores. The result is that, with less distracting clutter and products that are honed in to a particular taste, these items go fast. And because they sell fast, producers can afford to cut prices.

Okay, so the hush-hush was really just to keep efficient business practices under wrap, not to cover up slave labor or something like that. In fact, salaries of full-time Trader Joe’s employees can start from anywhere between $40,000 to $60,000 with impressive retirement benefits, according to the article. This explains why so many of the people ringing up my almonds and veggie pizza sport gray hairs and wedding rings. Or at least why they don’t seem to be miserable job-loathers.

Trader Joe’s prides itself on being more of a neighborhood shop than a chain, with yellow bridges hanging from the ceiling and murals of the city on the walls of the Pittsburgh store. But it is still a chain, one that continues to expand, and many express worries that this homegrown vibe will get lost in the wake.

But this is a sad old tune, one that is manifest in the changes that have taken place in the organic movement that paved the way for specialty stores like Trader Joe’s. Once a smattering of small farms run by some idealistic hippies, organic food comprised a $24.8 billion industry in 2009, according to the Organic Trade Association.

In a business sense, this is a wild success. But for those who valued organic for its small-scale relationship with the earth, a proliferation of certified chemical-free industrial products is a bit of a let down. Author Michael Pollan concludes his book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by stating that this system is in fact contradictory, and that while sometimes we have to live with contradictions, “we ought [to] at least face up to the cost of our compromises.”

And that’s what Trader Joe’s is, too: a compromise. My initial ardor for the store was more a hope that it would be a cheap answer to all my food and health gripes, which it’s not. There are things I wish it’d change, particularly packaging, but I’m still going to shop there for a lot of my groceries because, well, I like it.

Before Trader Joe’s, I never thought to pick up tamales or Greek yogurt or stroopwafels. It may be an oddly tight-lipped corporation, and it may be environmentally imperfect like the rest of the world, but I’m not ready to begin foraging for my food in the woods to avoid all these well-intentioned yet imperfect systems.

Sorry, Mother Earth. In the meantime, I’ll hang out with some folks in Hawaiian shirts and have some fun.

Write Kayla at kah117@pitt.edu.