Free Enterprise and Capitalism

[Stryder50]

A thread for what it is and how it works.
The following post full of excerpts to illustrate one example.

 

[Moonglow]

You must be a venture capitalist looking for an investment.

 

[progressive hunter]

You must be a venture capitalist looking for an investment.

you must be a troll looking for attention,,

 

[Stryder50]

Trader Joe Wrote a Memoir​

The book is a sort of “Kitchen Confidential” for the grocery business, but without the drugs or rage.
...
In the sixties, a thirty-two-year-old entrepreneur named Joe Coulombe presided over a midsize chain of California convenience stores called Pronto Markets. The company, which lived in the shadows of 7-Eleven, was nearly bankrupt. One afternoon, a desperate egg supplier paid Coulombe a visit. He had a major problem: he had far too many extra-large eggs. In order to off-load them promptly, he offered them to Coulombe at the same price as the plain old large eggs. This meant that Pronto Markets could sell extra-large eggs—which were twelve per cent per dozen larger than the large eggs, a meaningful difference to customers—at a discounted price, undercutting other chains.

The success of the discounted extra-large eggs helped buoy Coulombe’s stores, and eventually allowed him to embark on his path to grocery-business notoriety. A few years later, he used the financial resources and customer insights that he’d acquired through Pronto Markets to start Trader Joe’s, a grocery store known for its seemingly irreconcilable characteristics: high-quality, health-minded foods self-branded and sold at bargain prices. Coulombe would build an empire rooted in small-scale cleverness and common sense, exploiting loopholes and product discontinuations, zigging where others zagged, and turning the rest of the grocery business’s trash into treasure for Trader Joe’s.

Coulombe, who died last February, at the age of eighty-nine, was one of the very few business leaders who could make minor discounts on the price of eggs feel monumental on the page. He tells plenty of these kinds of fun-fact-laden business tales in “Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys,” an unusually colorful and sensible business guide that refuses to glamorize entrepreneurship. Coulombe insists that success in business hinges not on the mind of a visionary leader or anticipating a technological disruption but on more mundane and hard-earned factors: ruthless product knowledge, respect for employees, plenty of good luck, and a deep understanding of complex legislation. (“We had found a loophole in the law, and by God we drove a truck through it!” Coulombe writes.)

“I’m going to disillusion those dear souls—there seem to be a lot of them out there—who think that Trader Joe’s sprang, fully developed, from my brain, like Athena from the head of Zeus,” Coulombe declares, early on. For anyone who has visited a Trader Joe’s and experienced its dazzling array of foods, its bargain-basement prices, and its cheerful and hyper-competent staff, and wondered, What’s the catch?, “Becoming Trader Joe” provides many of the answers, most of which are satisfying and delightful. The book is a sort of “Kitchen Confidential” for the grocery business, but without the drugs or rage. In the age of Jeff Bezos and an endless stream of news about worker exploitation and corporate imperialism, it’s nice to go behind the scenes of a beloved national chain without uncovering insidious forces at work.
...
As for the growth of Trader Joe’s, the chain advanced gradually and methodically during Coulombe’s tenure, a testament to his dogged product research and open-minded, adventurous approach to buying and selling food. One of the company’s historical successes, for example, was almond butter. Coulombe claims that for years they were one of the only retailers selling the product. Parts of “Becoming Trader Joe” are too relentlessly focussed on intricate economic principles to be interesting to anyone outside of business school, but even these sections offer up entertaining details about Coulombe’s decision-making. In the nineteen-seventies, he made a deliberate effort to employ women full time in Trader Joe’s stores. Because he wanted all employees to share types of duties equally—which meant that women would participate in the physically laborious tasks of unloading shipments and stocking shelves—he had to change his approach to inventory: “We made an effort to get rid of any single case that weighed more than forty pounds,” he writes. That’s why, at the time, Trader Joe’s opted not to stock sugar.

In the mid-sixties, Coulombe picked up on two distinct but related news items. One was that an increasing percentage of Americans were going to college—a delayed-onset effect of the G.I. Bill of Rights of 1944, which resulted in a far better-educated American populace. The second was that the development of the Boeing 747, which would be launched in 1970, would facilitate much higher levels of international travel. He foresaw that these developments would create large swaths of educated, middle-class consumers who were curious and well-travelled, which would translate to more refined tastes in groceries. “In Pronto Markets we had noticed that people who traveled—even to San Francisco—were far more adventurous in what they were willing to put in their stomachs. Travel is, after all, a form of education,” he writes. “Dimly, I saw an opportunity to differentiate ourselves radically from mainstream retailing to mainstream people. . . . You might think of Trader Joe’s as one of the more esoteric cable channels; the supermarkets as NBC-CBS-ABC.”

Thinking about the hallmarks of the Trader Joe’s brand, it’s easy to imagine Coulombe as a progressive idealist, obsessed with the idea that his business was helping to make the world a better place. This was not the case; as the leader of a profit-driven company, he did not try to sell his colleagues or readers on the illusion that he was first and foremost a do-gooder. He didn’t even seem to have much of a kinship with the hippies, hipsters, intellectuals, and health-food junkies he catered to. But he did discover, along the way, that doing good often benefitted his bottom line. He was prone to “doing the right things for all the wrong reasons,” or engaging in acts of “selfish altruism,” he writes. Chief among these “right things” was a respect for his workers. “This is the most important single business decision I ever made: to pay people well,” he writes. He reasoned that employee turnover was the biggest cost to his business, and by paying his workers high wages and offering them excellent benefits he would ultimately reduce his costs.
...

Trader Joe Wrote a Memoir

The book is a sort of “Kitchen Confidential” for the grocery business, but without the drugs or rage.

www.newyorker.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...
Trader Joe's is named after its founder, Joe Coulombe. The company began in 1958 as a Greater Los Angeles area chain known as Pronto Market convenience stores.[7][8] Coulombe felt the original Pronto Markets were too similar to 7-Eleven and the competition would be too much.[9][10]

Coulombe developed the idea of the Trader Joe's South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean[11]. The Tiki culture craze was still going strong in the United States in the 1960s, so in a direct nod to the fad, the Trader Joe's name itself was a spoof on Trader Vic's, the famous tiki-themed restaurant that had opened its first location in the Beverly Hilton in 1955. Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills was notoriously expensive to eat at, but Trader Joe's in Pasadena would provide an irreverent and less expensive offering of food and drink.[12]

Coulumbe noted two trends in the U.S. that informed the merchandising of his new store concept: one, the number of college-educated people was rising steadily, due in part to the G.I. Bill, and two, with new jumbo jets due to premiere in 1970, international travel would be accelerating as well. A better educated, more well-traveled public were acquiring tastes they had trouble satisfying in American supermarkets at the time.[13]

The first store branded as "Trader Joe's" opened in 1967 in Pasadena, California; it remains in operation.[8] In their first few decades, some of the stores offered fresh meats provided by butchers who leased space in the stores, along with sandwiches and freshly cut cheese, all in-store
...

Trader Joe's - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

Ya know in an out burger just caused a abortion Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

In and out burger I've looked at thier location map
I don't know what the deal is with in an out ....some resturants have regional deals with others to stay out


In n out should pull a chick filet ....offer a franchise for peanuts and invade the entire South and rust belt


Devils always in the details ...always! But if I was in charge I'd pull my best people in and say gents I has an idearrrr let's make it happen!


Supply chain problems wouldnt help .....the restaurants today are dropped on site in pieces and put together like a piece of ikea furniture in no time flat.
Not to mention your supplies from food to bags, wrappers, staws napkins blah blah blah blah
Totally go for it though
Hell
Cattle ranchers raised 300 million to open meat processing operations and gave the finger to big agra ....beef ranchers get totally fucked over ...they put in the most labor ,blood sweat and tears and get dicked for it ...


I wish them yuge success and others to follow .....more more more more of this please


By me a little farmers markets starting selling local beef ,pork and lamb ....its the shit .....theyre locals been around for years here...they just recently added meat ...**** yeah I'm a greatfull customer


Any way
Fast food invasion
Investors and people wanting franchises would be throwing money at ya .
Shit I'd consider gettin in on some of that action money wise ....some people get together wanna run 10, 20 ,30 ,50 restaurants ....


For instance the biggest dominoes franchise has like 500 restaurants ...or it was pizza hut ....whoeever it was


I'd target only middle class, upper middle class white majority areas .... and tourist areas cause joggers cause to much drama ........and gunfire ....the sprite supply needed alone lol I mean cmon man


Dats wacist ....probably but who cares...call cvs in San Fran and go **** yourself ......Ha!


People say it is a tasty burger

If you stick to your guns patriots and former Americans would just eat it up .....and your burgers ....


Ever see a daisy sour cream commercial ....my commercials would be completely full of white people and I'd hire 5 of the best autist and 5 of the best anons to completely send social media into a complete ******* rage at least once every quarter
Betcha it would be a money making smash ..
Down here they line up around fast food restaurants like they were waiting online for an original cronut.

One time
I never waited online I had 4 delivered fresh for a 100 dollar tip plus cost ......cause why the hell not that's why! ....I shared them with frens that morning


Yeah they were pretty good ..