Inside Trader Joe’s holiday product strategy

Trader Joe’s has carved a niche in the competitive grocery landscape with its private-label offerings, items shoppers can’t find elsewhere.

That is most evident during the holidays, when the Monrovia, California-based grocer rolls out hundreds of seasonal products.

This year, Trader Joe’s is selling 469 products during the winter holidays, 86 of which are new offerings, according to the latest episode of the Inside Trader Joe’s podcast, which was released Monday.

The limited-time items include everything from health and beauty products to candles, candies, baking mixes, cheeses, beverages and more.

“Some of the products, well, they’re frankly ways for us to test product ideas and see if you like them,” podcast co-host Matt Sloan, Trader Joe’s VP of marketing, said during the episode, referring to a 12 Days of Beauty sampler pack. “So, there’s a bunch of fun things in here, many of these things, this is the only place to get them. We just want your thoughts and your feedback.”

Trader Joe’s debuted the 12 Days of Beauty sampler in 2019. This year, 11 of the items are new to the pack.

The grocer is rigorous when developing and sourcing its products. For example, the new chocolate croissant candle is made from soy wax, coconut oil and beeswax, with a lead-free cotton wick.

“You want a wick in a candle to stay upright, to stand straight and lead wire often helps that happen,” Sloan said. “But when you burn lead, you’re basically aromatizing, vaporizing lead. We don’t want to do that, so we figured out ways to have wicks that are made that stand straight without lead.”

Coated pretzels are a popular snack item at Trader Joe’s year-round. For the holidays, though, the grocer developed Trader Joe’s Astounding Multi-Flavor Mini Pretzels, a box of four limited-edition flavors, all in individual bags, including peanut butter with candy gems, coffee, peppermint-dark chocolate and milk chocolate with rainbow nonpareils.

“We know our customers love coated pretzels, and so we wanted to create a collection during the holidays that a customer could feasibly share with their friends or their family,” a Trader Joe’s product developer identified only as Trang said on the podcast. “So, we wanted to make it a giftable type of product, but also a very delicious type of product. We have four different types of pretzels, none that we carry any other time of year.”

Among its savory seasonal offerings, Trader Joe’s this year is selling Shrimp Pouches of Many Colors, vibrantly hued dim sum made without synthetic dyes. The dumplings are filled with shrimp, daikon radish, ginger and onion and can be microwaved, steamed or pan fried.

The product is made with natural vegetable colorings, with green coming from spinach, red from beets and yellow from a mix of pumpkin and turmeric.

“We take an idea, we travel the world, we find a great vendor partner to work with, and we come up with a recipe and develop a product and bring it all the way through our internal process to launch,” a Trader Joe’s product developer named Ally said on the podcast.

Trader Joe’s “has emerged as one of the breakthrough stories in retail in 2023,” according to a report earlier this year by foot traffic data firm Placer.ai.

The grocer, which has more than 500 locations, averages up to three times as many visits per square foot as conventional grocers, even though a typical Trader Joe’s location is about a quarter the size of a standard supermarket, the report found.