ECONOMY STUDIOThe average American supermarket carries 33,248 items in a store of 42,272 square feet, and takes in $668,377 a week1. Trader Joe’s carries about 4,000 products, roughly 80% of them under its own name2. It has no loyalty program and no manufacturer-paid discounts3, and it sells nothing online4.
It is still growing. Trader Joe’s opened 34 stores in 2024 and 43 in 2025, and plans more than 20 in 20265.
Follow $100 through a normal supermarket
Supermarkets run on thin margins. Kroger’s sales were $147.6 billion in fiscal 20256. Of every $100, $77.10 paid for the goods, $19.60 ran the business, and $3.30 was left as adjusted operating profit7. Across food retailers, the average net profit margin is 2.1%1.
The average household spends $169 a week on groceries, about $8,800 a year8. At Kroger’s margin, a supermarket keeps about $290 of that as operating profit8.
Trader Joe’s is private and does not publish accounts. Its revenue is estimated at about $20 billion, and it has 661 stores in 43 states and Washington, D.C.9. Since it can’t be measured line by line, the way to understand it is to look at what it refuses to do.
Refusal 1: fewer products
A typical supermarket’s 33,248 items are about 8 times Trader Joe’s 4,00010.
Fewer products means bigger orders of each one and less shelf space to fill. Trader Joe’s stores are between 10,000 and 15,000 square feet11. The average supermarket is about 3.5 times the size of a 12,000-square-foot Trader Joe’s10.
The best public estimate of what that does to sales is old. In 2010 Fortune estimated Trader Joe’s sold about $1,750 per square foot a year, more than double Whole Foods2. Today’s average supermarket sells $19.59 per square foot a week, about $1,019 a year, so the 2010 estimate is about 1.7 times the average10.
Refusal 2: no famous brands, no paid shelf space
About 80% of what Trader Joe’s sells is its own label, products “you just cannot get elsewhere”12. Its suppliers pay no advertising, couponing or slotting fees, and a vendor agreement said “Vendor shall not publicize its business relationship with TJ’s in any manner”2.
Refusal 3: no sales, no coupons, no loyalty card
“You don’t have to be part of a special club,” a Trader Joe’s vice president, Matt Sloan, told Grocery Dive3. Its marketing chief, Tara Miller, said: “We’re not tracking individual customer purchases, but we are tracking whether or not a particular product sells well”3.
Instead of cost-plus pricing, Trader Joe’s marks items up at different rates so that it only has to raise prices when it must13. Its jumbo Kalamata olives stayed at $2.99 for a decade13. In March 2024 it raised the price of a banana from 19 cents to 23 cents, the first increase in more than 20 years14. “We only change our prices when our costs change,” a spokesperson told CNN14.
Refusal 4: nothing online
Trader Joe’s offers no online ordering, curbside pickup or delivery4. It ended its New York delivery service in 2019, saying that “instead of passing along unsustainable cost increases to our customers” it would keep prices low and “make better use of valuable space in our stores”4. Across U.S. supermarkets, 8.9% of grocery item sales happen online1. At Trader Joe’s the share is zero4.
“We’ve invested those resources in our people rather than build an infrastructure that eliminates the need for people,” Tara Miller said4. At other supermarkets, self-checkout handles 33% of transactions15.
Does it work?
Shoppers rank grocers in dunnhumby’s yearly Retailer Preference Index. Trader Joe’s was No. 1 in the first two editions, 2018 and 201916. It fell eight places to 16th in 202417 and came back to 7th of the 81 largest U.S. grocers in 202618. The same study found that 41% of a grocer’s long-term success rests on saving customers money, a record high18.
That matters while grocery prices are still rising. Food-at-home prices were up 2.7% in the 12 months to June 202619.
The model is decades old. Joe Coulombe renamed his small Los Angeles chain Trader Joe’s in 1967 and sold it to Aldi co-founder Theo Albrecht in 197920. It is still owned by the family behind Aldi Nord9.
What shoppers give up
The trade is real. There is no delivery, no coupon stacking and far less choice: if Trader Joe’s doesn’t make your favorite brand, you shop somewhere else. For the shoppers who stay, every refusal is a cost the store never has to pay. In its own words, Trader Joe’s puts that money into steady prices and its staff4,13.
