From Crunch to Cult: Trader Joe’s First Private Label : Part 1

Today while I was working on a new food product for a client in Tokyo, I was browsing the Trader Joe’s website and a interactive widget popped up and asked 

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True or False ?

In 1972, our very first Trader Joe's private label product was Panty Hose.

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As a long time slave to Trader Joe’s, naturally I clicked false as the TJ’s Country Pumpkin Spice Granola’s orange packaging danced in my head like sugarplums at Christmas. The widget came to life and gave me a nice little “attaboy” but did reassure me that even if I had answered “true”, TJ’s had in fact sold private label panty hose for about 4 years.

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You are correct! It's

FALSE. In 1972, our very first private label product was Granola.

(However, we DID sell panty hose from about 1973 to 1977.)

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Looking back through my presentations about Trader Joe’s I found some materials in a 2018 presentation I did called Innovation Secrets of Trader Joe’s. 

Granola made the perfect choice for TJ’s inaugural private label item because it simultaneously reflected three intersecting cultural and strategic forces; the rise of the natural foods movement in the late 60s and early 70s, private label as a strategic business pillar and Joe Coulombe, the founder of TJ’s customer targeting strategy of the “over educated and underpaid.” 

As the natural foods movement advanced, granola had just become a symbol of the new “health food” and “back-to-nature” culture spreading from California outward. Trader Joe’s founder Joe Coulombe saw that middle-class, educated consumers were starting to reject processed foods and seek whole grains, nuts, and natural ingredients — a radical shift from the post-war convenience era. Granola was the perfect flag-bearer for that movement. The category was even the inspiration for a new lifestyle segment of customers, simply called “granola.” 

Private label was starting to be seen as a strategic business pillar where the creative marketer could simultaneously enhance their profitability, create customer loyalty and drive brand value. As a pioneer in the sector, Coulombe was determined to differentiate Trader Joe’s from ordinary grocery chains by creating proprietary, higher-quality items at lower cost, effectively, an early “own brand” model. Granola was an ideal starting point because it was simple to produce and package. It had high perceived value but modest cost. It lent itself to storytelling with their target market. So launching a Trader Joe’s brand granola was both low-risk and a great way to start establishing that Trader Joe’s stood for something unique and authentic.

Of course the genius behind Coulombe’s strategy was the identification, articulation and strategic targeting of the “educated consumer.” Joe Coulombe famously said Trader Joe’s was built for the overeducated, underpaid, teachers, journalists, grad students, etc. Granola fit their lifestyle perfectly: “intelligent indulgence,” something nutritious, natural, and a little rebellious compared to mainstream cereal.

So TJ’s Country Pumpkin Spiced Granola became Trader Joe’s first private label product because it perfectly captured the new California health-food ethos, was easy to produce, and helped define the Trader Joe’s identity as a store for curious, educated, quality-seeking shoppers.

But it did much more than that, it became the blueprint for the entire Trader Joe’s private label empire. In Part 2 we will examine how TJ’s went from a box of Country Pumpkin Spice Granola in 1972 to the gold standard in private label marketing.