New York (CNN Business)Turns out Trader Joe was a real guy, and his shrewd instincts led him to create a counter-culture grocery empire. Joe Coulombe, a struggling convenience store owner in Los Angeles, decided in 1967 to open a grocery chain to appeal to the small but growing number of well-educated, well-traveled consumers that mainstream supermarkets were ignoring.”I have an ideal audience in mind,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. “This is a person who got a Fulbright scholarship, went to Europe for a couple of years and developed a taste for something other than Velveeta” ordinary beer and Folgers coffee, he said. Coulombe recognized that international travel was about to explode thanks to the new Boeing 747 hitting the market. For the name of his new store, Coulombe landed on Trader Joe’s to evoke exotic images of the South Seas. The name was inspired by Trader Vic’s, a popular Tiki Bar restaurant started in California. One marketing expert thought it was a terrible name — “Trader” was “something associated with selling defective horse flesh,” Coulombe said in his memoir, “Becoming Trader Joe,” published in 2021, a year after he died at age 89. But it stuck, and the first Trader Joe’s opened in Pasadena, California, in 1967. The location was ideal for his new target customer, surrounded by college campuses, a hospital and big engineering firms.”He was a grocery outsider who was able to see things differently,” said Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket.” “He wanted to tap into this idea that food was exploration, that food was travel and adventure.”The first Trader Joe’s store had a nautical theme with marine artifacts including a ship’s bell, fish netting and half of a rowboat. The check out counter was an island with a roof. Employees wore Polynesian shirts and Bermuda shorts. The manager was called captain and the assistant was first mate. And lilting Hawaiian music played over the loudspeakers. But the merchandise looked nothing like what you’d find at a Trader Joe’s today. The original store had a typical convenience shop assortment of groceries, along with discounted magazines, books, socks and hosiery, records and photo finishing. The big draw, however, was the alcohol selection. California had Fair Trade laws on alcohol, so manufacturers set minimum prices and it was illegal to go below them. Since Coulombe couldn’t compete by offering low prices, he recognized he had to offer a wide variety to stand out. The first Trader Joe’s boasted of having the world’s largest assortment of alcohol — 100 brands of Scotch, 50 brands of bourbon and gin and 14 types of tequila. Coulombe eventually found a loophole in California’s Fair Trade laws that allowed his shop to import high-end French wine and sell it for lower prices than competitors, helping him reach wine connoisseurs. (It would not be until years later that Trader Joe’s released its famous $1.
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