Moving from the 1960s to the 1990s, it is also a tour of California’s shifting economy and culture, guided by one of its most original thinkers.Īs anyone who has ever enjoyed, say, TJ’s now-defunct Sir Isaac Newtons or the Bagel Spinoza might surmise, Coulombe drew inspiration from a breathtaking variety of sources. Though clearly written for fellow entrepreneurs and business types - for all his folksiness, Coulombe had an MBA from Stanford - and published under HarperCollins’ Leadership imprint, “Becoming Trader Joe” is much more than a “how-to” guide. Through “Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way & Still Beat the Big Guys,” Coulombe is still telling us how it’s done. So at Watson’s behest, and with Coulombe’s blessing, she edited the manuscript “for grammar and flow,” added some images and pitched it to her agent.Ĭoulombe died in the pre-pandemic days of 2020. “I read the book and fell in love,” Civalleri says. Eleven years later, he approached Civalleri, a friend who has published several travel guides, and asked her advice. Watson knew the Trader Joe’s story almost as well as Coulombe, but he had no idea what to do with a book. In 2007, he gave it to original Trader Joe’s employee and longtime friend Leroy Watson, with instructions to do whatever he wanted with it. The tone is conversational, one man’s view of the world through the wine, spirit and grocery business, filled with the type of puns, literary references and bold-faced pronouncements that mark the store’s signage and its legendary promotional leaflet, the Fearless Flyer.Īccording to Patty Civalleri, who shepherded the book to publication, Coulombe did not imagine the book would ever be published he wrote it simply to ensure there would be a record. In the early 2000s, decades after he had sold it to the German family that also owns Aldi’s, Coulombe wrote a “how I did it” history of Trader Joe’s, a chronicle of the clever end-runs, deep research and influences that powered the now-national chain. How did a store that sells 15 kinds of dark chocolate and zero kinds of aluminum foil, a chain that proudly advertises popular items with limited availability, even come into being, never mind becoming wildly successful?įounder Joe Coulombe will tell you exactly how in his posthumously published new memoir, “Becoming Trader Joe.” It’s hard to think of any other market that holds so much sway over its customers, especially a chain with problematic parking and such a frankly bizarre inventory.
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