I am going to assume that most of you Juicy readers heard the story about Trader Joe's on NPR or read it in Fortune Magazine. I am feeling too lazy to find it and link out to it, so Google it yourselves. Anyway, a number of people commented to me that as Jews they were trying to decide if they were going to have an issue with their favorite grocery store being owned by Germans or not. None of them wanted to give up shopping at TJs, but they felt kind of guilty. For myself, I own cars made by the Axis (a Honda and a VW), so I was certainly not going to throw stones at my glass house. My response to my co-religionists was "Absolvate" on the Deutch issue. The Trader employs Americans and does it fairly by providing reasonable wages and benefits. Also, many an American company produces their food.
However, I do think we should take issue with TJ and his alter-egos (Giotto, Ming, etc.) on how much food he purchases from other countries. I'm not against sharing the wealth, but do we Americans need to eat Canadian tomatoes and bread (oh, it's good, though)? Or apples from New Zealand (I don't care how good their fujis are)? Or Peruvian asparagus? Personally, I have boycotted their nuts (mostly cashews) from Thailand because I hear that nuts from southern Thailand may contain lead. I would like to see the Trader rely more on our homegrown resources, sell foods when they are in season and not bother with the mid-winter imports to give us consumers more choice in that realm.
Soapbox done.
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