Trader Joe’s Reveals Insider Scoop in New Podcast

Trader Joe’s on Tuesday launched its first-ever podcast, called Inside Trader Joe’s, in a creative marketing effort to expose listeners to the company’s background and unique approaches to the grocery industry.

In a five-part series that the retailer promises “isn’t going to be a commercial,” Trader Joe’s crew members—including the company’s CEO, president and COO, president of stores, EVP of marketing and merchandising, and store captains—talk candidly to answer customers’ frequently asked questions and reveal never-before-heard company stories about the way the retailer does business, how it aims to differentiate from other grocers, where and how it discovered its products and its plans for the future.

“I will cop to having eaten some biscuits intended for animals other than humans recently,” Matt Sloan, VP of marketing product, says in the series’ first episode, bringing listeners inside Trader Joe’s tasting panel where decisions are made about which products to bring to market. “But I can say with conviction, we taste everything.”

The podcast series dishes on everything from Trader Joe’s parking lots, e-commerce plans, what saved the retailer from going out of business and how a customer helped change the way Trader Joe’s bananas are sold.

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“Providing information to our customers has always been an important part of what we do,” said Kenya Friend-Daniel, spokesperson for the Monrovia, Calif.-based grocer, in a statement. “Inside Trader Joe’s has allowed us the air—literally—to delve a little deeper into our story and to answer the questions our customers have asked of us, in our own fun and interesting way. It’s a good start to a conversation we hope to continue.”

The podcast series is available on the Trader Joe’s website, Apple Podcasts and other podcast streaming services.