The novelty, the snacks, the tote bags.
Whatever the reason, the grand opening of a Trader Joe’s in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood Friday morning drew hundreds of people standing in line well before the doors were unlocked.
Josh Sheng and Stephanie Huang were second in line.
They’d gotten there just before 8 a.m., over an hour early. (The first person in line demurred when asked for her thoughts.)
“The prices and deals are always good, and also all their fun items that they come out with,” Sheng said. “It’s always a good, hot place to go.”
The new store is the sixth Trader Joe’s in Seattle and the 28th in Washington. It’s the first new one in the city in 13 years. On a sunny spring morning, in an age when everything can be delivered to your doorstep, a festival atmosphere prevailed as the new store provided a dollop of evidence that, at least for groceries, brick and mortar is far from dead.
It is also the newest addition to a veritable cornucopia of grocery stores in the Greenwood/Bitter Lake corridor. All within a few miles of each other are Ken’s Market, Fred Meyer, PCC, Lenny’s Produce, Saar’s Super Saver (also newly opened and featuring mountains of fried chicken), QFC, Sprouts Farmers Market, Asian Family Market and now Trader Joe’s.
The new store marks a grocery revival at the intersection of Greenwood Avenue and North 87th Street. It sits below a new eight-story apartment building on the site of a shuttered Safeway.
Huang was eager to get a new mini tote bag. “They just came out with the spring colors,” she said.
The tote bags have become a viral hit, spurring searches, lines and frantic phone calls at stores across the country. Available in a range of pastels, the tote bags are $2.99 but sets of four go for around $60 on eBay.
At a Trader Joe’s in West Seattle, where there’s a limit of four bags per customer, new shipments of the light pink, lavender, mint and sky blue totes are supposed to arrive daily, a cashier said Friday morning.
“We learned our lesson after last year,” the cashier said.
The store has pretty much sold out of its allotted daily shipments every day this week, another worker said.
Sam Woodward was last in line in Greenwood, standing a block and a half from the entrance, just before the 9 a.m. opening. An engineer, he said he took time out of his workday for what he said was his second-ever grand opening of a grocery store.
He walks by the area quite a bit and his anticipation has been building.
“I’ve been excited to see the Trader Joe’s sign going up,” Woodward said. “I saw them pulling trucks in and putting carts in the store, I saw the baskets building up outside. The wood paneling that is classic for Trader Joe’s.”
“Trader Joe’s has awesome snacks that are knockoffs of, you know, general purpose snacks like Oreos and Cheetos,” Woodward said. “They’ve got all sorts of different snacks that are tastier. They have Cheetos that have, like, truffle flavoring, which are delicious.”
But, ultimately, Woodward said he’s more enthused by grocery stores in general than by Trader Joe’s. He recently went to Saar’s for the first time, which had, he noted, beef shank and king bolete mushrooms.
“I’m just really stoked on the new grocery stores in the area right now,” he said. “Greenwood and North Seattle are getting great grocery stores.”
Seattle Times staff reporter Elise Takahama contributed to this report.
