FSQ (Frequently Searched Questions): Why doesn’t Trader Joe’s deliver?

When Google autocompletes search queries about retail brands, it offers a glimpse of what most confounds customers. This series looks for answers.

Trader Joe’s did deliver groceries, at least in New York City, for about a decade, but left the party not long before it really got started. When it announced it would end delivery on March 1, 2019, some cauliflower-gnocchi-loving New Yorkers despaired—and politicians stepped in.

“There are too few affordable grocery stores in Greenwich Village, which I represent, and other parts of New York,” State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal wrote in a letter to Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane, which was quoted in amNY at the time. “Trader Joe’s delivery service was a vital part of mitigating that problem for countless families.

But Trader Joe’s stuck to its scan guns.

“Instead of passing along unsustainable cost increases to our customers, removing delivery will allow us to continue offering outstanding values—quality products for great everyday prices, and to make better use of valuable space in our stores,” Trader Joe’s then-spokesperson Kenya Friend-Daniel told Business Insider.

Just a year later, of course, in the pandemic’s early days, grocery delivery saw unprecedented growth:

• Online grocery sales surged from $2 billion in August 2019 to $6.5 billion in March 2020, according to the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey.
• They peaked at $9.3 billion in January and March 2021, but have remained steady, with online grocery sales totaling $9.1 billion in December 2022.

With its nautical theme, you’d think that Trader Joe’s would worry about missing the boat when it comes to deliveries. But don’t bet on it changing course.

Aisle be there: Nakia Rohde, public relations manager at Trader Joe’s, declined to comment about why the company doesn’t deliver. But she did acknowledge in an email that it’s a “common question” addressed in the FAQ section of its website.

“We do not offer curbside pickup or delivery, and we don’t work with third-party delivery services like Instacart or Dumpling because they can’t match our outstanding in-store value and shopping experience,” the website explains. “After considering the options, we’re still just big ‘ole fans of the neighborhood grocery store where we can say hello when you’re looking around wondering —‘what’s for dinner?’”

In April 2020—early in the pandemic, when other supermarkets were stepping up delivery and curbside pickup—the Inside Trader Joe’s Podcast featured executives explaining why the grocer would be doing neither. Tara Miller, vice president of marketing communications at Trader Joe’s, suggested that some competitors’ efforts were not paying off.

“[W]e know that some other retailers are offering” grocery delivery and curbside pickup, Miller said on the podcast. “We also know those offerings don’t always translate into positive results.”

Setting up an online shopping system is “a massive undertaking,” Matt Sloan, vice president of marketing product at Trader Joe’s, added on the podcast.

“It’s something that takes months or years to plan, build, and implement and it requires tremendous resources,” Sloan continued. “Well, at Trader Joe’s, the reality is that over the last couple of decades, we’ve invested those resources in our people rather than build an infrastructure that eliminates the need for people.”

Razor thin margarines: It’s no secret that companies have struggled to make the numbers work when it comes to online grocery.

• Amazon Fresh recently announced it would charge Amazon Prime members a fee for any grocery order unless it topped $150, up from the previous threshold of $50.
• Amazon-owned Whole Foods, which previously offered free delivery to Prime members, began charging a $9.95 fee on grocery orders in 2021.
• Instacart, the third-party grocery delivery startup, reportedly cut its valuation to $10 billion in December, plummeting from $39 billion early in 2022.

“Grocery already has very thin margins. and delivery makes those margins even thinner without charging high fees or having large order minimums,” Jacqueline Tubbs, consumer supply chain and logistics analyst at CB Insights, told us in an email (because she’d lost her voice when we were scheduled to speak).

Trader Joe’s has “a distinguished identity around discovery and customer service,” and “their selection can change frequently from season to season and store to store,” Tubbs said, noting that these attributes could be undermined by delivery.

“This variability in inventory as well as their small store footprints would make it more complicated for grocery delivery,” she said. “Having grocery pickers and delivery drivers weaving in and out of their small aisles and often very small parking lots would also hurt the in-store experience for customers.”

But Benjamin Lorr, author of The Secret Life of Groceries, thinks Trader Joe’s may be behind the times.

“Trader Joe’s is skeptical of change,” Lorr told CNN. “The chain has been very slow to adapt from its core model and core competency.”