Their frozen mac and cheese is really good, but really bad for you.
I like a lot of their frozen Asian meal kits for a quick weeknight meal. My favorite is the kung pao chicken. The Szechuan beef and broccoli is good, too.
Their “fresh squeezed” orange juice is pretty much the only bottled orange juice I really like.
Their store brand olive oil is high quality and inexpensive.
And of course there is inexpensive wine. The Charles Shaw, aka “Two Buck Chuck” is of course the best known, but there’s a huge selection of other wines that are only a bit more expensive and are quite good for the price.
DIL and Me are coming to LR just to go to TraderJoes as soon as it’s open. Man, we must be awful bored to make a little road trip just to go to a grocery store.
Hey, you have to have your fun where you find it:)
You can get plenty of real food there but snacks are the big draw.
My perfect Trader Joe’s shopping trip would include:
Bags of sesame and soy crackers.
Nuts, which are generally available raw or roasted and salted or unsalted.
Dried fruit, especially the unsweetened dried cherries and some of the dried mango. There is a dried mango I like and one I don’t. I can’t tell you how to distinguish between them.
Dried coconut
Ginger candy (it’s sweet but they are really big chunks of ginger, so I find it
Almond butter and natural unsweetend peanut butter
Wine: You can get their house brand Charles Shaw (jokingly referred to as “two-buck Chuck”) or other real wines. Two-buck Chuck is great for cooking and sometimes even drinkable. They usually have a cheap pretty good Cava for $12 the name of which escapes me.
Pralines
500g block of dark chocolate (way less than it should be, and usable for baking or snacking)
Frozen foods are another big draw. I like:
Soup dumplings ($3 for a box of six). These are as good as the ones I buy at the really good dim sum place near me.
Samosas
Edamame
Marinated BBQ teriyaki chicken (in a red bag). We cook it with veggies to add fiber and dull a little of the sauce’s sweetness.
They have a wide range of frozen dinners but, in general, they are tasty but roughly 80% rice, so they aren’t really a great deal. Other people love the frozen burritos but, for my money, they aren’t cheap enough to be worth compromising for and they are too small and not tasty enough to replace a fresh burrito from a decent taco stand. When Mrs. Charming and Rested wanted to stockpile burritos, we just made a bunch ourselves instead of buying theirs. Their frozen enchiladas are disappointing. Some people won’t leave without a jar of the Speculoos Cookie Butter but I’m not a fan.
Bananas are sold by piece rather than by weight so big bananas at 19 cents per piece are a good deal. I can shave nearly 40 cents off my food bill that way!
Their cereals are great. My favorite is the Oatmeal Flakes.
You’re opening at the prime time of the year for hundreds of pumpkin spice products. They pride themselves on the excessive numbers of pumpkin spice products.
Trader Joe’s doesn’t have a deli in the sense that big grocery stores do. Same with bakery. They just have a section of bread and pastries that were shipped to the store, not an actual in-store bakery. You have to realize TJ’s is more like a small specialty store, not a big full service grocery store.
They do stock a selection of partially baked loaves that you can take home and finish baking in your own oven fairly quickly – stuff like baguettes, Italian breads, etc. Those are especially nice for when I want a nice warm, crusty bread to go with a stew or something.
No. Again, TJ’s is much smaller than the stores you are comparing them to.
ETA: I see I’ve been beaten to the punch while typing up my long winded answer.
You’re not alone. I recently read an article (and I’d supply a cite if I could remember where I read it) that said that living near a Trader Joe’s tended to increase the value of your home more than any other grocery store. Whole Foods was next.