On the morning of Sept. 26, about 200 Brooklynites stood in the rain to be the first ones to enter the latest Trader's Joe opening in Cobble Hill, its first Brooklyn store.
"I'm excited," Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Brandon Wolf told the Daily News while taking a cell phone photo of workers loading boxes of artichokes into the 14,000-square-foot store.
"I'm going to upload it on my Twitter account so that my girlfriend could see that it's opening tomorrow," he added.
"I've had suburban envy in terms of Trader Joe's for years," Stephanie Creaturo, who co-owns a nearby yoga studio, told the News. "We'll have a place to get quality goods for cheap."
The uproar comes as crowds continue to throng its 14th St. location in Manhattan since its opening in 2006. Customers regularly endure waits of up to half hour in lines that snake around the store.
"Trader Joe's knows what the consumer wants and they figured out the magic recipe for cheap, healthy food," Seth Unger, a Brooklyn Heights resident at the Cobble Hill opening told The Brooklyn Paper.
One skeptic was Gina Provenzano, a blogger at www.epicurious.com. While praising the Cobble Hill stores' bread, nuts and grains selections as "paradise," Ms. Provenzano chided the limited assortments of fruits, vegetables, cheese and meats. She also noted that while Trader Joe's "prides itself on its selection of natural products, what this store really pushes is frozen food," and harped about its large portion of packaged and canned foods.
Not surprisingly, a host of fans defended the grocer on the blog.
Jamield wrote, "I think you're missing the point of Trader Joe's completely. It's meant to be a place for interesting items packaged, but not processed, at attainable prices. It is not meant to have as elaborate a cheese department at Whole Foods, but when the two have intersecting products, you can bet Trader Joes will offer it for at least 20-30 percent less...The real beauty of it is that it isn't a gigantic food emporium."
Wrote Travesty1, "I'm a chef by trade and after 14 to 18 hours of cooking the last thing I want to do when I get home is more cooking. TJ's offers a lot of healthy meal options that are quick and simple. It beats the hell out of fast food."
Although not on the scale of New York City, the retailer's store openings -even rumored openings - regularly gain press attention in many parts of the country.
Next up for Trader Joe's in the New York region is a two-level store at Broadway and 72nd Street in Manhattan opening in 2009. New York Magazine noted that Trader Joe's will be entering one of the New York's best-known "foodie neighborhoods," with Zabars, Fairway and Citarella nearby.
Discussion Questions: Why is Trader Joe's doing so well in New York City? How does it create so much buzz wherever it goes? If the concept is so successful, why aren't other retailers doing more to replicate its formula?