Wirecutter’s Guide to Shopping at Trader Joe’s
ANTARA: The whole Tiki vibe, was very intentional and was there from the founding. 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.
Christine: I am Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin, and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CAIRA: Hi, Rosie.
ROSIE: Hey, Caira.
CAIRA: It’s a bit weird, but Christine actually isn’t with us today.
ROSIE: I miss her.
CAIRA: I know.
ROSIE: But it’s nice to be with you.
CAIRA: Yeah, we’re going to have a fun one today.
ROSIE: Why?
CAIRA: Because today we are talking about one of my favorite stores, at least for snacks and frozen foods.
ROSIE: Trader Joe’s.
CAIRA: Trader Joe’s.
ROSIE: Love it.
CAIRA: I’m actually embarrassed about how much I love Trader Joe’s.
ROSIE: You’re not alone. I mean, maybe cult is a little too strong, but there’s definitely a Trader Joe’s hive.
CAIRA: Yeah.
ROSIE: We love it.
CAIRA: A fan base.
ROSIE: If you love it, you seem to really, really love it.
CAIRA: Yeah. And we wanted to stress that at Wirecutter, we don’t normally recommend things from just one store, or gush about one place. But TJs kind of holds this unique place. The people want to know what the best stuff is and so our colleagues wanted to give TJs the Wirecutter treatment. In depth testing. So they recently did a taste test and crowned 18 of their favorite Trader Joe’s items, from snacks, to frozen foods, to baked goods.
ROSIE: Across dietary restrictions and limitations because you and I both have them.
CAIRA: For sure.
ROSIE: And so we’ve got Antara Sinha, who is an associate writer on the kitchen team in to talk Trader Joe’s.
CAIRA: All the things: how she decided what to test and how they narrowed down 18 picks out of what feels like thousands.
ROSIE: And also just how the store works and how it exists in the United States, who owns it. There’s some good stuff in that piece.
CAIRA: Yeah, yeah, I’m really excited to talk to her. We’re going to take a quick break, and then when we’re back, we’re going to talk with Antara about all of the best tips and tricks that she’s learned in reporting for this guide.
ROSIE: Plus a little taste test.
CAIRA: Woo.
ROSIE: See you soon.
CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Antara Sinha, who is an associate staff writer on the kitchen team. Previously she was writing for Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, and Cooking Light, and she has eight years of experience writing about food and drink and culture. She’s a really, really big fan of ice cream.
ROSIE: I love that for you.
ANTARA: My nickname, that self-imposed nickname, was I’m the ice cream correspondent at one of my previous jobs.
ROSIE: That’s amazing. What’s your ice cream of choice when you’re out in the world?
ANTARA: Always a chipwich. Number one.
CAIRA: Like an ice cream sandwich?
ANTARA: Number fan. Yeah, that’s my go-to.
ROSIE: A chipwich, so a chocolate chip cookie with ice cream?
ANTARA: Yep.
ROSIE: And then another?
CAIRA: Wow.
ANTARA: Yeah, go-to. It’s always like a slice of pizza. Even a bad one is good.
ROSIE: Wow. Big, bold. Well, welcome to The Wirecutter Show. We’re very happy to have you.
ANTARA: Thank you so much for having me.
ROSIE: We’re talking about Trader Joe’s today, so let’s talk. It’s pretty unusual for the kitchen team at Wirecutter to write an entire guide just on one store. How did you decide to do this? Where did this come from? How did it all come about?
ANTARA: Me and my editors, we were actually very mindful and had a lot of conversations of what about Trader Joe’s warrants this singular coverage in a way that we don’t do other supermarkets. 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.
CAIRA: And that’s a fan base, too.
ANTARA: Fan base as well like that.
ROSIE: Yeah, yeah.
ANTARA: Absolutely, and then also they do inhabit this very unique spot of the ingredients that they sell, the type of products that they sell, introducing a lot of folks to new flavors, international cuisines. That feels very unique, and we want it to give folks an idea of what’s worth their money, what’s worth making a trek out for.
CAIRA: I feel like on my TikToks at least, and maybe this is just confirmation bias because it’s how I also feel-
ROSIE: It’s the algorithm.
CAIRA: Yeah, feeding me what I want to hear. But I always see people on TikTok jokingly complaining that Trader Joe’s isn’t a real grocery store. They don’t, to me, seem to have the best fresh ingredients, but people love them for their frozen foods and their really specialty snacks. But you still have to go to a real grocery store after you do a TJ’s run.
Going back to your fan-based clientele, what is the real appeal with Trader Joe’s? What are people actually getting out of it?
ANTARA: I actually am of the same camp, 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. That’s a huge plus, which we’ll get into all the reasons why. They also do repackage “unfamiliar” foods, trending foods in a way that’s comfortable, palatable.
To the point of it not feeling like a real grocery store, I think that’s because when you go into a broader supermarket, you have 10 options for one thing. Trader Joe’s whole business model really relies on we have one spaghetti, and this is the spaghetti that you have to get.
CAIRA: I didn’t even think about that.
ROSIE: Yeah, that’s interesting.
ANTARA: Think of if you go to, I’m a Florida girl, Publix is my number one-
ROSIE: I do love a Publix.
ANTARA: … 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.
CAIRA: And their aisles literally aren’t that tall.
ANTARA: You see all your options in one glance.
CAIRA: Huh.
ROSIE: I never thought about that, either.
Okay, so let’s take it back, back to the founding. Who is the titular Joe? What is the story? Who owns Trader Joe’s now? Where did it come from?
ANTARA: Yeah, so Joe Coulombe in the ’60s basically was trying to reinvigorate a failing convenience store, essentially. It started off being a place to sell cheap wine, to becoming a place to sell… His whole ethos was to sell food for the overeducated and underpaid, which is a very loaded phrase. You can interpret that in the many ways that you wanted to.
CAIRA: We’re both squinting for the people who can’t see Rosie and I.
ANTARA: Well, it’s interesting because this was in the ’60s 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. The whole Tiki vibe, was very intentional and was there from the founding. 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.
And so anyway, now it’s owned by Aldi, but-
ROSIE: It’s owned by Aldi?
ANTARA: It is, but we’re getting into the weeds here. It’s owned not by the Aldi that we’re familiar with. We can get into the great Aldi schism of Germany, but I don’t know if we have the time for that.
It’s owned by Aldi Nord, which is different from Aldi Sud, which is what we have in the US. But yes, it is owned by an Aldi, and I don’t think that you see too much of that influence. It still operates pretty independently. It is a very specific American aesthetic and American appeal.
ROSIE: Right, so to to that end, you described the aesthetic and the ethos as California. It does feel like ’60s energy is 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. Why?
ANTARA: I think it’s really intentional in their training. 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.
I think you can even see this in the buildings that Trader Joe’s chooses. 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. 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. But I would also argue that it’s difficult to shop local if you’re shopping at a Trader Joe’s in a way that you have so many more local options in your community as well.
ROSIE: 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 “foreign” or-
CAIRA: Unfamiliar.
ROSIE: Unfamiliar, right, foods “palatable” to folks who haven’t maybe experienced them before. You walk in today, you sometimes see Trader Jose’s, which I-
CAIRA: Wait, they still do that?
ROSIE: I think, isn’t it-
ANTARA: It’s a little bit of a controversy. People really pushed back on them in 2020 for supposed racist overtones of this branding. 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. And so a lot of the original products still carry some of that original Trader Giotto’s, Trader Jose’s on the packaging.
ROSIE: Implying that it’s perhaps an Italian-type dish or a nondescript Latin American-type dish. What I’m really asking is, who is making the food that exists at Trader Joe’s?
ANTARA: Yeah, there’s a lot to get into here because Trader Joe’s has a very specific model that what makes it what it is. They rely on co-packing and co-manufacturing, which honestly most supermarkets do. 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 half-and-half or 80/20 in the opposite direction.
CAIRA: Can you break down what co-packing and co-manufacturing is?
ANTARA: Yeah, let’s get into it.
Co-packing is 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.
Honestly, a lot of brands operate like this because you realize that the branding of an item is a huge cost. And so that’s how Trader Joe’s actually also makes things so cheap is because majority of their stuff is-
CAIRA: It’s in-house.
ANTARA: In-house and labeling, but the food is coming from other manufacturers.
CAIRA: Oh, that’s really interesting. When I covered mattresses, I went to factories and I saw that a lot of mattress companies are producing mattresses and then they’re just slapping a different brand on top, but it’s all the same manufacturer.
So at Trader Joes, items are made by a separate company and rebranded with the TJ’s name and logo. You also might hear it called white labeling, is that right?
ANTARA: For sure. White labeling, private labeling, they’re all related practices with minor differences, but that’s just a Trader Joe’s whole business model.
ROSIE: Okay, so one of the things I like from Trader Joe’s is the miso paste that comes in that little plastic pouch. Take that as an example and take that through the process of how it ends up at a Trader Joe’s.
ANTARA: 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. They take that miso and have a relationship with a co-packer, which will then package it with Trader Joe’s branding.
This helps cut costs in a few ways. Basically, there’s also something called slotting fees, which is a brand like… I keep using PepsiCo because it’s the biggest company I can think of.
ROSIE: As an example.
ANTARA: 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. 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.
Because products for Trader Joe’s are private labeled, there’s no slotting fee. That keeps the cost down.
ROSIE: Oh.
CAIRA: Another big part of this store’s lore is you can go into a store on any given day and one of your favorite things might be discontinued forever.
ANTARA: Right.
CAIRA: Why? Why do they do this? Is it on purpose?
ANTARA: It is on purpose, absolutely.
CAIRA: What?
ROSIE: It’s the ire.
ANTARA: Yeah. Well, this all goes back to how they keep their products so cheap.
Going back to slotting fees because they aren’t getting the one-time fee of a brand paying to put their product on the shelf, it’s really expensive to keep the store stocked with something if it even dips a little bit in sales. And so it’s in their benefit to have this high turnover, constantly have new hyped, like the pumpkin spice sweet that comes to light every single August or early and earlier every year it feels like. It’s in their benefit to have this rapid turnover. It’s really expensive to keep a product stocked on shelves year round.
CAIRA: So it’s cheaper for them to just cut it and move on to the next thing?
ANTARA: Move on to the next trend, the next fad, the next-
ROSIE: Interesting.
ANTARA: … trending food combination.
CAIRA: 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. I’ve used that toner for eight years straight.
ROSIE: Scary.
ANTARA: But here’s what happens is that with that rapid turnover, it also keeps folks coming back because there is this sort of feeling of intrigue, of discovery every time you walk into the store. That’s very much part of their aesthetic.
ROSIE: That’s really what gets me, too. I am, what would you call it?
CAIRA: I don’t know how to say it nicely.
ROSIE: Yeah.
CAIRA: Adventurous.
ROSIE: I’m an adventure shopper.
CAIRA: She’s adventurous.
ROSIE: I like to go into the store with an open mind rather than a list.
ANTARA: No, me too.
ROSIE: Trader Joe’s is the perfect place for that.
ANTARA: Yeah, they’re in your brain.
ROSIE: I didn’t see that last time. Let me try that.
CAIRA: 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.
ROSIE: Absolutely.
CAIRA: I get that exact same feeling when I go into Trader Joe’s. Yeah, they’re doing something right.
ANTARA: Yeah, and it’s very curated. These decisions are very much… They’re not just pulling them out of nowhere. Like every grocery store, they’re looking at what flavors people are really looking to right now.
I just check today and they already have their Dubai chocolate dupe on shelves, and I’m sure they were on their game months ago.
CAIRA: Wow.
ROSIE: So it’s trends and seasonality?
ANTARA: Yes.
CAIRA: 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? What is your best advice for buying your favorite things at Trader Joe’s all year round?
ANTARA: For something that’s like a frozen item, you should just stock up when you see it if you have a space in your freezer if frozen rice packets are how you build your meals out, although I doubt they would discontinue something basic like that.
CAIRA: Well, you say that now.
ANTARA: 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 “international” foods, things that are unfamiliar, 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.
For example, one of our picks in this guide is the frozen kimbap. Kimbap is this Korean dish where it’s looks almost like sushi. It’s seaweed wrapped around rice, usually wrapped around some assortment of fish, seafood, vegetables, whatever you want. 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 kimbap. If you love something enough that you want to be more exploratory about it, for sure check out those other places.
ROSIE: We’re going to take a quick break. When we’re back, we’re going to reveal Antara’s hottest tip to finding out the companies that actually manufacture Trader Joe’s products. We’re also going to taste some stuff.
CAIRA: Live taste test.
ROSIE: Live taste test, stick around.
ROSIE: Welcome back. Our guest today is Antara Sinha, an associate staff writer on the kitchen team here at Wirecutter. She wrote an article for the site entitled “Our Favorite Things from Trader Joe’s,” which I think is pretty self-explanatory.
Antara, in your piece you wrote “in our pursuit of Trader Joe’s best offerings, we tasted over 70 of its frozen, refrigerated, bakery, and pantry items. 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.” Anyone who’s been to a Trader Joe’s knows they have hundreds if not thousands of products. How ever did you decide where you and the team were going to begin, what to test, and what was that testing process like?
ANTARA: Yeah, we had a few meetings about how we want to organize this. It’s definitely very daunting because it’s a whole grocery store. There’s a lot of things to look at. 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 take a picture for future coverage.”
ROSIE: And it’s I imagine a lot of pressure because people love what they love there.
ANTARA: Exactly, so our first place to winnow it down a little bit was that we eliminated what we put this broad category of ingredients. Basically whatever we would want to test independently in a best butter guide or in a best ketchup guide, we left those items out. That eliminated quite a bit.
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. We also were under the assumption that if you’re a regular Trader Joe’s shopper, we can’t tell you if the bananas are the best bananas for the worst bananas. That definitely made the store a little bit smaller.
And then from there we went department by department.
For the most part we tried to keep our first round of coverage for this guide things that are available year round, but that’s tough because already there are things that I want to purchase that are not available anymore. It literally involved 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. And so that narrowed us down to frozen items, to snacks, to baked goods, which I think is where the cult of Trader Joe’s is most excited about to begin with. It was a fun process. A lot of cheese, a lot of snacks.
ROSIE: Okay, so then you picked what you picked, and then was it you eating all of these things?
ANTARA: 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 eight plus of us, were able to taste test these products. We did over five days multiple hours of testing, a lot of them… We tried to group them in an intentional way. 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.
ROSIE: Your job is awesome.
ANTARA: It was a fun day. We also were like, “Let’s do this after 4:00 PM so it feels more like a little happy hour.”
And then another day we tried to focus on frozen snacks, so that’s where the fun jalapeno poppers came in. Toward the end, this is a lot of Trader Joe’s to be eating in one stretch, but I feel pretty happy with where we landed with. We had a wide range of perspectives in the mix, too. I’m single, very much shopping for myself, 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.
CAIRA: What surprised you most during testing?
ANTARA: I was honestly surprised by, despite everyone’s varied palates and very different ways of grocery shopping, we were all able to come together to a consensus on most items.
Obviously, there’s preferences of taste. 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. But when it came in terms of just quality and bang for your buck, it was pretty easy to come to a consensus. For example, the unexpected cheddar is one of our picks in the guide. It’s comparable in price to our best American cheese pick from a different guide. That’s, I think, a real value because you have a special tasting cheese I can put on a cheese board of the same value as your Kraft singles. That felt like something that was worth calling out is if you’re going into Trader Joe’s is worth seeking out.
ROSIE: And so then conversely, what did you hate?
ANTARA: It was a truffle mousse pate. For folks who don’t know what pate is, it’s chicken liver. I will say that we were really hoping that this could be a great beginner pate to try. If you never had pate before-
ROSIE: Why would that be a good beginner?
ANTARA: Well, because it’s available.
ROSIE: Is it truffle very polarizing?
ANTARA: It’s pretty cheap, so low barrier to entry.
ROSIE: Okay, for pate?
ANTARA: For pate, I mean, it wasn’t even just a flavor, it was gritty. Unanimously we were all not a fan. That was-
ROSIE: I’ll tell you what I don’t want-
CAIRA: Truffle.
ROSIE: … is gritty pate.
ANTARA: Yes.
CAIRA: Do you guys ever have a 50/50? Do you have to vote? Do you have to try and convince somebody to turn to the other side? How does that work?
ANTARA: The way that we do taste tests is that we get everyone’s qualitative feedback on every item. It’s not just taste, flavor, it’s also information. How would you serve this? Would you go to Trader Joe’s specifically for this item?
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 the value add of this. 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? Is it something that you would go out of your way to purchase? I think with all of those combined, we were able to make a strong case for every item on the list.
CAIRA: Antara, did you ever discover some of the companies that are doing this private labeling for Trader Joe’s?
ANTARA: Yeah, so for this guide, we didn’t intentionally go into it as a way to sleuth what suppliers Trader Joe’s was using, but there’s some really excellent reporting by Eater in 2017 where they FOIA’d the FDA and the USDA for all recall information. This is a really smart way to check for-
ROSIE: Tricky.
ANTARA: Yeah, so if there’s a recall, for example, of big name potato chip company, and it happens to coincide with a recall from a Trader Joe’s for that same potato chip, you can make the educated guess that they’re coming from the same manufacturer.
ROSIE: That’s called deductive reasoning.
ANTARA: Yeah.
CAIRA: Very Sherlock Holmes-y.
ANTARA: It was 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. If you’re curious about this, if you’re really interested, you can just follow recall information.
CAIRA: Okay.
ROSIE: Interesting. I might because there are some things that they’ve never brought back, but I’m determined to find out where they source that from made.
ANTARA: I think also an important distinction to make is that everyone thinks that you can just look at the ingredients, and usually what happens is that these big suppliers will tweak their ingredients for a Trader Joe’s. It’s not quite as easy as at one-to-one comparison.
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. But you wouldn’t know that unless you for sure knew that they were both from the same supplier.
CAIRA: We are going to do the best part, which is a taste test. 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.
ANTARA: Right. Well, to go back to the beginning, their chipwich, excellent.
ROSIE: Okay.
CAIRA: Really?
ROSIE: What is your favorite thing from Trader Joe’s that is not ice cream?
ANTARA: Oh man, that’s tough. I have a pretty strong sweet tooth, so I’m such a sucker for the baked goods: their vanilla cake, their chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was one of our picks and I literally had to foist it off to other people like don’t let take this whole cake home. It will be gone on the subway before I even get to my apartment.
CAIRA: 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.
ANTARA: Right.
ROSIE: This is why we’re not testing the entirety of the store because-
CAIRA: Well, when you narrow it down after meeting all of our dietary requirements, we have two things.
ROSIE: Yes, I’ve got food allergies. You’ve got-
CAIRA: Dairy.
ROSIE: … food allergies. You’ve got food restrictions.
ANTARA: I don’t eat 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 there is something for everyone on this guide. We made it an effort to really call out dietary restrictions in the guide as well. 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.
CAIRA: Yeah, you really do. Unless the three of us are ever in a room together again.
ANTARA: Then we have two items. Let’s get into it.
ROSIE: We will never go to a dinner together. Okay, let’s eat. What did you bring for us?
ANTARA: Yeah, so we have basically Trader Joe’s version of Takis, which are these flavored tortilla chips. They’re rolled, they’re alarmingly red. Very sour, very spicy.
CAIRA: They have this lime punch to them.
ANTARA: They have a lime punch. It’s the kind you want to lick your fingers. But all this to say these Takis aren’t quite at a 10, they’re at a mellow six. But still punchy and flavorful and excellent.
And then the second item that we have is the frozen kimbap that I kept talking about. It’s this Korean dish where it’s rolled veggies. 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. It fills a lot of buckets. It’s also vegan, so we can all share and enjoy it together.
CAIRA: Woo.
ROSIE: We love it. All right, what are we going to taste first?
ANTARA: Maybe let’s do the the frozen kimbap first. We all were big fans of this.
ROSIE: Let’s give it a little cheeky taste.
CAIRA: Okay. Smells good. I love a little meat sushi, but this one’s just tofu.
ANTARA: It’s good.
ROSIE: It’s a little bit fishy. The tofu is almost like the tofu skin, like an inari-type tofu skin. Delicious.
CAIRA: But you get a little crunch. What is that from, a carrot?
ROSIE: The carrot maybe?
CAIRA: I see something green there, too.
ANTARA: Yeah, there’s some veggies in here. There’s some burdock root in here.
ROSIE: This tastes really nice.
ANTARA: It has a mellow sweetness to it that we all really liked.
CAIRA: Yeah, it feels like a whole lunch in one tiny snack. You get a little rice, you get a little veggie, you get a little “meat.”
ROSIE: Oh, there’s the crunch.
CAIRA: Yeah.
ANTARA: One of our editor’s favorite hack is to take these while they’re frozen and roll them in some whisked egg and then pan fry them. That makes it into even more of a complete meal with your added protein from the eggs.
CAIRA: Oh, I’m doing that immediately.
ROSIE: My kids might like that, actually.
CAIRA: Yeah, I would eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
ROSIE: All right, what else are we testing?
ANTARA: These are rolled corn tortilla chips, chili and lime flavored.
ROSIE: It doesn’t roll off the tongue.
ANTARA: Not quite as much as Takis, but here. Go ahead. These are solidly beach snack territory for me even though they would parch you out. But I think that’s the fun of it.
CAIRA: Yeah.
ANTARA: ASMR of us chewing tortilla chips.
ROSIE: It like [inaudible 00:30:16]
CAIRA: It just hits you. It tastes like a really savory but limey tortilla chip.
ANTARA: Yeah, it’s very punchy.
ROSIE: So good.
CAIRA: And it is rolled into this fun little… What is this, like a straight Cheeto?
ROSIE: You know what I like about this shape is that you get so much of the seasoning on it. With a regular triangle-shaped tortilla chip, you might get less on the top, a little more on the bottom, a little more on one side or the other. This is just-
CAIRA: It’s coated.
ROSIE: … dredged in chili lime.
ANTARA: And then your fingers are dredged, and it’s like a whole…
ROSIE: It’s so satisfying, though. It’s so satisfying.
CAIRA: When I’m usually eating 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. You never have to do that with these.
ANTARA: Yeah.
ROSIE: Delish.
ANTARA: They’re a real, I think, crowd favorite. We were all big fans of this one.
ROSIE: All right, well, we’ve tasted, we’ve talked Trader Joe’s. The real question is, when are you doing this for Costco?
ANTARA: Oh, man. God, can you imagine a whole warehouse of-
ROSIE: It’ll take you-
ANTARA: We have been talking about, okay, we’ve done Trader Joe’s. What are other national supermarkets that warrant the same degree of coverage? If you talk about brand loyalty, the people love Costco.
ROSIE: The people love Costco. It’s in the zeitgeist and it has been.
ANTARA: For a while.
CAIRA: You need a 10-part series for that.
ANTARA: Absolutely, yeah.
ROSIE: All right, well, till then.
CAIRA: Before we wrap, we always ask our guests one final question. Antara, what is the last thing you bought that you really loved?
ANTARA: Ooh, I’m trying to think. I recently bought Onitsuka sneakers.
CAIRA: Ooh, say more.
ANTARA: Which they’re these Japanese brand. They’re of the same sort of genre as the Sambas, the Gazelles are flat walking shoes, but I wore them on vacation and I love them. They’re like a fun pop of color. They are teal.
CAIRA: Are you wearing them right now?
ANTARA: I am wearing them right now.
CAIRA: Wait, can I see?
Oh.
ROSIE: Oh, yeah.
CAIRA: Okay, okay.
ROSIE: Very nice.
CAIRA: I am familiar with this brand.
ANTARA: Yeah.
ROSIE: Antara Sinha, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really fun. I feel educated, I feel satiated, I feel-
CAIRA: Happy.
ROSIE: Happy, yeah.
ANTARA: Thanks so much for having, this was so much fun.
CAIRA: Wow, I could listen to Antara talk all day. She’s just so knowledgeable.
ROSIE: She had all the answers.
CAIRA: Yeah, I know. Who knew that there was so much to know about Trader Joe’s?
ROSIE: I hoped there was a lot to learn about Trader Joe’s, and I think we were right.
CAIRA: Yeah.
ROSIE: What are you taking away from this episode?
CAIRA: Well, first of all, weird that there’s actually a dude named Joe. I didn’t realize that-
ROSIE: I love that.
CAIRA: … that was a guy.
ROSIE: I love it.
CAIRA: I think that my biggest takeaway is how they keep their food so affordable. 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. They’re not paying that really high stocking fee when they’re putting a new product on the shelves.
ROSIE: It’s definitely a unique business model.
I think for me, having some explanation of how it is that certain items I fall in love with aren’t there the next time I go, that was helpful to understand. 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.
Not that I needed to be absolved of that, but it just was helpful to understand why that might be.
CAIRA: Yeah, it makes sense. I do feel a little bit better because I have been mocked for wanting to go to separate grocery stores for different things.
ROSIE: No, Caira, you’re perfect.
CAIRA: Thank you.
ROSIE: If you want to find out more about Wirecutter’s coverage or if you want to check out any of the products Antara mentioned today, you can check out our website or you can find a link in our show notes.
Thank you so much for listening. We’ll talk to you soon.
CAIRA: Bye.
ROSIE: Bye.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pittman. Today’s episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.
ANTARA: If I bring up chipwich again, will I get banned?
ROSIE: Yeah.
CAIRA: Yeah.
