*In “Becoming Trader Joe,” Joe Coulombe writes that he was prone to engaging in acts of “selfish altruism.”*
**Photograph by John Blackmer / Orange County Register / Getty**

As I sit to write this, memories of my childhood are flooding back to the forefront of my thoughts. I was raised on a ranch in Northern California, and our parents bravely had 5 kids to keep track of and feed. Eating was a constant issue in our house because feeding 7 people three times each day meant that my mother had to prepare for and clean up 21 meals per day, 147 meals per week, 651 meals per month.

If you have ever considered having a big family, consider this one issue, then stop. Now.

The fact that we lived on a ranch helped a lot because there was always something that was ready to harvest and put on the table. From pumpkins to potatoes, and peaches, plums, and pickles. Then there was the protein: we had sheep, ducks, cattle, and chickens. Because we raised chickens for Foster Farms back then, we always had chickens. Plenty of chickens.

So, because of our ranch, feeding us wasn’t as much of an issue as you might think.

But mom still had to go to the grocery store every single week to get the basics: milk, bread, rice, cereal, sugar, flour, and you know, all the basics. Even though we had the main stuff handled on the farm, mom still managed to heap two whole carts with groceries during every visit.

This was in the 60’s and 70’s, when big pharma owned every pill we took, and the food industries had been overtaken by the ‘Science’ that boasted the importance of preserving food in cans, and freezers. The big-name trusted brands included Swanson (remember TV Dinners?), Hostess (Twinkies & Ding Dongs?) and Del Monte (canned everything?).

Back then, these big, trusted brands owned the precious shelf space and end caps in the grocery stores. They essentially dictated the items that should be carried, and where they lived in the stores. Even if a store only liked perhaps 5 of their items, the big Brands would insist that 30 (or 60 or 100)of their products be carried in the stores.

How could they do this – and get away with it? Well, those same trusted Brands also paid for the stores’ advertising and coupons that came out in the Saturday morning newspapers. So they got to dictate the distribution of their products, from penny-saving manufacturing all the way to the store aisles.

Mom and my older sister would scour the papers every Saturday morning in search of coupon savings for the likes of eggs, bread and milk. Whichever store in town could save mom an extra penny or so, well that was the store that she visited that day to buy the groceries for the week.

From the Little Guy to…

Way down in Southern California there was a guy named Joe that didn’t want to operate like a typical grocery store. He didn’t want the Brands to dictate what or how much he should carry. And he didn’t want to be told what price should be put on his products. In fact, not accepting products with hormones or preservatives at all, he clearly didn’t want to run his market like anyone else in the industry at all.

Joe was a fast-thinking kind of a guy, with a deep voice, a ready smile, and a noted swagger. He owned 16 little variety store markets around the L.A. area called PRONTO Markets and had gotten pretty good at forming his own place in the industry. One day, he learned that his biggest competitor was coming to SoCal and would run he and his 16 little PRONTO stores right off the face of the map.

Fear swept through Joe with a cold sweat and the need to think: should he stay and fight it out? Or should he simply shut down on Monday morning, and call it a day?

Joe gathered his wife and kids and headed up to a mountain cabin in Arrowhead, California. While there he exhaled and thought of several strategies to save his stores. But as he relaxed more and more, other kinds of thoughts entered his head: a pirate boat ride he took with the kids at a local theme park, and a movie he had recently seen that included a beautiful trading ship that went from port to port buying and selling all kinds of foreign goods to coastal populations. As he stared into his cocktail, he remembered that the umbrellaed Mai Tai in his hand was invented by a guy who became known as Trader Vic. These thoughts swirled in his head when suddenly it hit him like a fully loaded shopping cart in a sloping, crowded parking lot!

He ran back down the mountain and assembled his store troops together to make his enlightened announcement. He told them that they were NOT going to shut down. Nor were they going to stay and fight out a losing game. Instead, he had a third option in mind: he was going to change the playing field. This meant that they were going to redecorate the 16 stores with an island tiki theme, and that all employees would wear flowered shirts, and they would change their name to TRADER JOE’s.

The year was 1967. The next store he opened became the first Trader Joe’s, all the while migrating the other 16 stores into the new theme, one by one. Every day, Joe found new opportunities to differentiate his store from the standard grocers. Every day, he moved further into his own zone of uniqueness. It didn’t happen all at once, and it wasn’t always seen well by the public.

I remember as a teenager, I went to SoCal to visit my older sister, the same former coupon-clipper from earlier years. She took me to a little market that seemed kind of bohemian to my young and worldly eyes. They had something called grape cheese(!). My sister loved it for its other-than-cheddar uniqueness. As I walked its little aisles, I was hard-pressed to find any of our old and ‘trusted’ brands. I was happy to leave.

I moved to SoCal when I was 19 years old, and I have since grown to love that unusual market down the street. Decades later, I still go to the major grocery store for all kinds of stuff, but for the good stuff, Trader Joe’s has been my go-to store. And yours too, apparently. I heard recently that it is America’s most beloved brand. That’s quite a statement for the little guy that by striving to be different, his former business (sold in 1979) has become the big business that everyone else is trying to keep up with.

When I was asked to co-write Joe’s book “BECOMING TRADER JOE – How I Did Business MY WAY & Still Beat the Big Guys,” I was beyond honored. And mom? She would have been proud to know that I have been feeding my family the fresh, unprocessed foods that she fed to us back in the day. Cheers, Mom!

Joe’s book can be found on Amazon: https://amz.run/5Ku2 or at a bookstore near you. If you would like it to be signed, please visit: my website at https://PattyCivalleri.com

If you would like Patty to speak at your next meeting or event, please write to PCivalleri@Gmail.com

Subscribe Free to Palos Verdes Pulse

For 16 years, Patty served on the Director's Council of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. During those years, she traveled with scientists to research lost and ancient cultures. This experience made her an expert traveler that wanted to know more. A marketing writer and photographer by trade, Patty took her love of history, archaeology and travel and mushed them together with her natural inclination for writing and photography. The result is a new line of travel books and tools that incorporates today's way of thinking mindfully while going deeper than ever before.

And then, there's Trader Joe!