When I first heard about Trader Joe’s located on Stockdale Highway, many good compliments were given to the store, but I thought it was better if I visited it myself to find out if the things I heard were similar to my point of view.
I like visualizing everything around me before judging, and that is exactly what I did in this store. Before I decided what to write, I visited the store more than once to get a better point of view.
Arriving at the store was very pleasant because I always found a parking spot close to the entrance door (which is a positive thing for me because I am always in a hurry).
“Hello, how are you,” was the first thing I heard from an employee when I walked in the store and that definitely made my grocery shopping better because I felt welcome and not ignored like in many other superstores, where I am hardly ever greeted.
Trader Joe’s might not be the cheapest place to go to, but it is definitely very upscale in comparison to other typical grocery stores. I personally like eating as healthy as possible, and this store really blinks an eye every time I go because all its products are really fresh.
One of the things that I noticed is that at many other stores, unless you run into someone you know, everyone is in a hurry and not a single shopper greets each other. At Trader Joe’s, being that it is smaller, the brand choices are limited, but the shoppers have more in common with the products of their choice and its easier to socialize or simply ask any other shopper for an opinion about a product.
Another very positive aspect about this store is the check-out. I have never seen the line long, and if there are several customers in line, they are charged in seconds. The method of packing is not the usual plastic bags that rip with two gallons of milk. The bags are made out of cardboard and the best thing is that bagging the groceries is not my job! The employees usually do it themselves in a very organized way.
Most products are organic, which is why it makes the food better and the prices higher.
The store cleanliness is awesome in and out. Many times when I go to other food stores there is always some kind of container with no lid or a spillage on the floor, but in this store I have never seen anything like that. On the contrary everything is very well stocked and in place and even the carts in the outside are clean and ready to be used.
One of the many compliments that I give Trader Joe’s is that it offers a variety of good quality wine for a good price along with the huge variety of organic food, healthy chocolates, vitamins, products with very small quantity of preservatives and the freshest fruit and vegetables.
This store in my opinion is better than many other grocery stores in town, but as I have always said to myself, “not everything that shines is gold,” so I said to myself “among the dozens of good feedback that I got from this store, there must also be a bad one,’ and there was definitely one. I noticed that for three consecutive times that I visited the store, there was only one gallon left of the organic type of milk that I like, which made me make a special drive to the store on the next day just to get the milk.
I know nothing is ever perfect in life, but this store is really close. Now that I live on my own and I have to buy groceries for myself, I finally understood why my parents always shopped there week after week without going to any other place.