Trader Joe's...yay or nay?

[angelene17]

I know there was a post on here about Trader Joe's a while back, but I didn't really read much of it. What is good or bad about this store? I buy alot of my groceries there, and I want to know if I should be or not....

[Muzicfan]

I love the place, I am able to get unique vegetarian frozen dinner there

[Quizeen]

Trader Joe's is great. Good prices, nice variety of gourmet style and veggie items at reasonable prices. The main complaint that people seem to have with them is that they have a limited selection of poor quality produce that is over-packaged. I agree with the over-packaging contention, but at least at the TJs by me, the produce is pretty good.

[CharityAJO]

They get my endorsement, on account of they always have free cider when you go in. :) Cheap knock offs of all your favorite health food brands. And vegan salt n vinegar chips! Whoo ha!

They do, however, sell flesh. :(

[bonelessbeef]

omg salt and vinegar chips are my favorite..im hopefully comming vegan around the new years
is there site for trader joes?

[angelene17]

http://www.traderjoes.com/

[punkmommy]

I love Trader Joes :smitten:

[Erin_S2S]

When I lived in California, I went to Trader Joes a couple of times and loved it. If I had one here, I'd be there all the time.

[Soyboy]

A definite YAY for TJ's. They have a fairly broad selection of vegan and organic foods, including some damn good chewy vegan chocolate chip cookies (definitely not healthy by any stretch of the imagination tho'). Their prices are the lowest of any place in my area. The drawback to shopping there is that some items will suddenly not be available for months at a time (or longer), so if ya see something you like, buy lots of it!

[CaptainSwab]

Another big YAY for Trader Joe's! I also think they have great pricing. You can get tons of dried fruit and nuts for cheap there. Their soymilk, natural peanut butter, whole wheat pasta, and tons of other things are much cheaper there than at the health food store.

[MollyGoat]

Yay!

I like TJ's for packaged things--nuts, pasta, margarine, canned beans, luna bars, chips, etc. Then I go to other stores for produce. Works out great!

[Flower]

I've never been to one of these. Are they just a basic grocery store with some specialty items? :confused:

[CharityAJO]

They call themselves a "unique" grocery store. They're pretty much *all* special items. They sort of have a lot of the stuff you'd find at a small grocer in Europe, not the states. So us Americans go ga ga.

[Max Power]

I buy almost all of my "packaged" groceries there - usually everything except produce (TJ's produce is largely garbage and overpriced) and ramen. If only there was a Whole Foods near here... TJs + WFs = heaven.

[eggplant]

I love it for all the reasons people have said. At the stores here the produce looks fine, but is too overpackaged for me to buy. I buy all my peanut butter, tahini, oil, vinegar, beans, nuts, dried fruits, veggie milks, sundried tomatoes, frozen fruits and veggies, juice, veggie burgers, chips, hot sauce, flax seed meal, canned cat food, fruit leather, coconut milk, etc. etc. there. The only product of theirs I haven't really liked is their salsa...

[Artichoke47]

I give Trader a yay because they do have some items that the HFS and/or the grocery store don't have, such as blackberries...

Anyway, as an example, Trader has some air freshener that is $3.99. It says on it that it's animal-product-free and not tested. On the other hand, Meijer has some orange-scented air freshener that is placed by the Earth Balance items, yet it is $6.29 and it doesn't say on the bottle whether it's tested or not.

[Lenore]

They have a lot of very fancy food and much of it is quite good, but I prefer to support local coops (and thus local farmers and other businesses, rather than rich CEOs of chain stores) whenever possible. I'd still choose them over Safeway, Albertson's, and the like, though.

[kraftykraft]

I love Trader Joes because I can get soy milk and cereal cheaper there than at my grocery store. The one near me has good produce and a good selection of veggie frozen foods. I love their tofu and spinach ravoli and their dried fruit mixes. I would highly recommend it.

[angelene17]

The eggplant tortillini is excellent....it's cheap, and I've entertained many of my flesh-eating friends with this and they thought it was great! Their hummus is good too...very flavorful, yet not overdone!

[MRSSHF]

Yay from me too! They have really good products, lots of Vegan items, and everything is cheap and tasty. I wish we had one in Boise, but I try to stop in at the one in Reno when I've driving through to visit family.

[Quizeen]

Oh yeah, their nut butters are really good and cheap too. You can get almond butter for $3.99. The cheapest I've seen it at Wild Oats was something like $7. Cereal's a steal too. They have their own housebrands of granola but they carry most of the Barbara's Bakery stuff and Kashi too.

[bstutzma]

definitely have cheaper offerings. even their organic tofu is cheaper, and has a better texture IMHO :-) lots of great vegan body products too :-)

[Nirvana19105]

A definite YAY for TJ's. They have a fairly broad selection of vegan and organic foods, including some damn good chewy vegan chocolate chip cookies (definitely not healthy by any stretch of the imagination tho'). Their prices are the lowest of any place in my area. The drawback to shopping there is that some items will suddenly not be available for months at a time (or longer), so if ya see something you like, buy lots of it!

I love TJ's, but I must say, I've never, never, EVER seen these chocolate chip cookies everyone keeps raving about. I know their products vary from store to store, but this seems like the kind thing that most stores should have. They're not labled as vegan, are they? If so, then my store definately doesn't have them. I've checked the ingredients of basically all the cookies there, and from what I've seen, they all contain egg. Have I just missed the right package or what?

[Jaeska]

Yay for TJ, but nay on the fact that I can't work there for another two years...

[Soyboy]

I love TJ's, but I must say, I've never, never, EVER seen these chocolate chip cookies everyone keeps raving about. I know their products vary from store to store, but this seems like the kind thing that most stores should have. They're not labled as vegan, are they? If so, then my store definately doesn't have them. I've checked the ingredients of basically all the cookies there, and from what I've seen, they all contain egg. Have I just missed the right package or what?

The vegan chocolate chip cookies are called precisely that. It's in bigger type than anything else on the label: VEGAN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. They're about as junky as vegan junk food gets, so your body will thank you for not being able to find them.