Trader Joe's has been around in some shape or name since 1958, when Pronto Markets was started by a food trader by the name of Joe.
So begins the tale of the popular market on their online site. In 1967, that Joe decided to change the name to Trader Joe's, and, the timeline states very proudly, "we sold every California wine there was." That very first store still stands in the same place in Pasadena, Calif., and has the same parking lot, but not the room for every single wine now produced in California.
Yes, times change. In 2013, Trader Joe's opened its 400th store. On Oct. 3, it opened in Syracuse. Well, on Erie Boulevard in DeWitt, actually, usurping half of the Raymour & Flanigan store and causing traffic jams that stretched from one end of that already shopping-crazed stretch to ...
Oh, how the lore of this joint spread quickly by word of mouth. Any cocked ear any place could pick up ... It's amazing, like no other food place ... The cookie butter will give you a heart attack, the good kind ... I couldn't get in, the parking lot was full ... Nobody goes there, it's too crowded. OK, that last one is the punch like to Yogi Berra's double-speaking legend, but you get the drift.
So my dear wife Karen and I waited through a few weekends before pulling in off the boulevard one Sunday afternoon in late October. We found a spot, but there were not many open.
The market was crowded, but there was enough room to maneuver.
And I liked it. Trader Joe's IS pretty cool.
The aura is friendly, workers wearing trademark Hawaiian shirts, and some walls covered with colorful murals depicting recognizable Central New York landmarks. The Carrier Dome up there on the Syracuse University hill was certainly represented.
I almost snagged a sample of Thai chicken that smelled wonderful, but a woman who obviously felt she was more entitled to the last little cup than I swooped in to snatch it out of my grasp. Karen was glad I grumped about it quietly and only to her.
So I didn't buy any.
But I did notice that many of the products were packaged quite colorfully, named cleverly, and sold under Trader Joe's own name.
The company site just now told me that how they keep costs down, smart buying and selling on their part.
Indeed, the prices looked reasonable to me.
Karen agreed.
We couldn't leave empty handed.
I picked out a small plastic tub of sugar-free chocolate covered almonds, mixed between light and dark chocolate. Karen went for a small box of sea salt caramels. We both liked our candy treats. We bought two single-serving boxes of a frozen lunch that was half-pizza, half-calzone. It came out crisp and cheesy.
The check-out lines were staggered in such a way that rendered them unfamiliar and a stumper if you did not have a wheeled cart. A woman who saw our hand-held basket holding four items waved us in front of her.
As we were walking out, I liked the last line of the slogan about the store's no hassle refund policy. "It's that easy," the motto promised. First visit, yes, it was.
Will it replace Wegmans and Tops and Price Chopper, the big three supermarkets already in the Bialczak family routing at one time or another? Likely not. But what an excellent complement it shall make.