But I was reading The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman, with its implicit concept of multiple solutions to non-convex problems.

Leroy found a hippie outfit in Venice—I think it was called Mom’s Trucking—which would package the bran. But bran is a low-value product. They couldn’t afford to deliver it. Since they also packaged nuts and dried fruits, however, we somewhat reluctantly added them to the order. And that’s how Trader Joe’s became the largest retailer of nuts and dr

We really didn’t pay more per hour than union scale, but we gave people hours. Because union scale is so high, the supermarkets are very stingy with hours and will do anything to avoid paying overtime. I simply built overtime into the system: everyone was to work a five day, forty-eight-hour week. Actually, because of fluctuations in the business,

adopted a rule: Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. The vendor who screwed us twice was through, forever. During all my years in the company, I can recall only a couple of instances of permanent banishment. One thing that never failed to astonish me was how well samples from vendors actually matched the delivered products. Mos

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.

We fundamentally changed the point of view of the business from customer-oriented to buyer-oriented. I put our buyers in charge of the company.

Most of my career has been spent selling “plans of action and programmes of collaboration,” whether to Rexall to start up Pronto Markets; or Bank of America to buy out Pronto; or landlords; or vendors, many of whom have been very skeptical of, if not outright hostile to, my plans; and above all to my employees. If you want to know what differentiat

Still trying to maximize the use of a small store, I looked for other categories that met the Four Tests: high value per cubic inch, high rate of consumption; easily handled; and something in which we could be outstanding in terms of price or assortment.

I want to brag about something here: in thirty years we never had a layoff of full-time employees. Seasonal swings in business were handled with overtime pay to full-time employees, and by adjusting part-time hours. The stability of full-time employment at Trader Joe’s was due in part to caution in opening new stores, and insisting on high-volume s