technology for grinding almonds is completely different than the technology for grinding peanuts. Finally, Doug, whom you will meet often in these pages, found a religious colony in Oregon who had mastered the trick and taught it to Doug.

In 1962, Barbara Tuchman published The Guns of August, an account of the first ninety days of World War I. It’s the best book on management—and, especially, mismanagement—I’ve ever read. The most basic conclusion I drew from her book was that, if you adopt a reasonable strategy, as opposed to waiting for an optimum strategy, and stick with it, you’

Each SKU would stand on its own two feet as a profit center. We would earn a gross profit on each SKU that was justified by the cost of handling that item. There would be no “loss leaders.”

One of the fundamental tenets of Trader Joe’s is that its retail prices don’t change unless its costs change. There are no weekend ad prices, no in-and-out pricing.

how we built a successful business on high wages.

we became the best place in the world to buy a good bottle of wine for less than $2.00. That’s a position we held for the rest of my days at Trader Joe’s. It absolutely addressed our prime market, the overeducated and underpaid people of California.

Each full-timer was supposed to be able to perform every job in the store, including checking, balancing the books, ordering each department, stocking, opening, closing, going to the bank, etc. Everybody worked the check stands in the course of a day, including the Captain.

Time and again I am asked why no one has successfully replicated Trader Joe’s. The answer is that no one has been willing to pay the wages and benefits, and thereby attract—and keep—the quality of people who work at Trader Joe’s. My standard was simple: the average full-time employee in the stores would make the median family income for California.

David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man. The numbered paragraphs, the boxes drawn around the articles, are all Ogilvy’s ideas. I still think his books are the best on advertising that I’ve ever read and I recommend them.