I concur. I can't find anything other than all purpose and wheat flour. No bread flour, or anything more obscure like rye, spelt, etc. Similarly, they sell a single sea salt, alongside tons of trendy mixed salts. Want iodized salt? Go find a big grocery store. I do find tons of snacks and TV dinners, which I enjoy. But if I'm stocking up on essentials, I'd rather go to a big store. And yes, I do find obscure flours at big stores, most recently 00 and rye.

Someone said that his favorite part of shopping at Trader Joe's is afterwards when you go to a supermarket to buy all the stuff you need.

Safeway has everything I'd want from Trader Joe's at this point, and I don't have to do two trips.

TJ's for us is "we need these specific store brand items" or "I need to restock my Blackthorn cider." And unfortunately TJ's has removed three store brand products in the past two years, so the number of reasons to go there is rapidly diminishing for our household.

On a side note: Purchase a bag of vital wheat gluten, a 2lb/1Kg bag will last a very long time. The difference between AP flour and bread flour is the gluten content. You can bring any regular AP flour up to the highest gluten level that a high gluten bread flour brand like King Arthur will produce. One tablespoon of vital wheat gluten exchanged for one tablespoon of AP flour for every two cups/240 grams/2.4oz of AP flour is a provides a good high gluten ratio. I use it regularly in my bread recipes and pizza dough recipes. I only keep bread flour on the shelf for those days when I am feeling lazy or need a very specific brand of bread flour for one specific recipe.

I also find that adding gluten to rye-heavy doughs makes them rise far more easily (and generally just behave better).

This is indeed why Trader Joe's could never be my entire grocery shopping experience. Even staples like dry black beans are unavailable. God forbid you want to bake something...

They have a couple interesting products that I can't get elsewhere, and they don't have lots of products that I can get at literally any other grocery store.

What are you using the dried black beans for that a can won’t suffice?

They're cheaper, take up less space, no processed crap from all the goo in the can, you can cook them to whatever firmness you want...should I keep going?

Not OP, but the texture is different. Soak some black beans overnight then cook them, and compare them to rinsed canned beans. The latter are slipper and spongy, the former are lighter and have better texture.

They taste differently, it us very noticeable. So, soups and sauces. The dried beans soup is my favorite, canned beans soup is crap.

I couldn't even find plain white sugar the last time I looked. They have small bags of "raw" sugar, which is fine for putting in coffee, but not good enough for many baking needs.

But that's exactly why TJs is cheaper. You gain price and sacrifice variety.

It's not just food either, trader joes is lacking many of the non-food goods that other grocery stores almost universally have. Need aluminum foil or parchment paper? You can't buy those at trader joes.

> trader joes is lacking many of the non-food goods that other grocery stores almost universally have.

It's almost like their business model is “don’t devote lots of floor space to stuff you can get anywhere so price competition drives margins to zero”. .

I'm aware.

Way off topic here, but Anna napoletana tipo "00" changed my life.

00 flour is great for baking and pizzas!

I had to adjust my hydration when switching from all-purpose to 00, but it is definitely a superior structure, especially with a 48-hour ferment and a little diastatic malt.

TJ's processed/frozen stuff is often better, and always way cheaper, than either the name brands or supermarket generic brands. So I get those things at TJ's (sometimes along with stuff like milk and eggs), and buy grains, produce, meat and everything else from Ralphs.

I agree that there's way too much plastic on the produce, but some of the boxed prepared food is really, really great.

The local paper did comparison shopping and found Safeway to be about the same price for a weekly trip as Whole Foods. Trader Joes was significantly cheaper in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's hit or miss, but usually just because the stuff I don't like their is not my taste, not that it is poor quality. Some of their products I think are really great, both in quality and bargain. Plus, they work on a space efficiency model: products that don't sell popularly won't be kept in stock. Sometimes that's what I'm optimizing for when I want to try new products: what are other people voting for with their dollars?

I think a lot of it is because it's novel to me. I'm in the Midwest, and I just don't have any close to the greater Springfield, MO area. I'm told it's just beyond their supply chain. You have to get around St.Louis before they show up.

We have HyVee though, and I quite enjoy it there.

Agreed. But to be fair, I've yet to see somewhere with a better cheese selection.

Well, I live in Berkeley, so I'm pretty damn spoiled when it comes to cheese shops. But I can see that being helpful if there are no cheese stores, import stores, or specialty foods stores in your town.

Man I miss the Berkeley Bowl, I spent years within walking distance..

Is Cheese Board still in business?

Our Kroger has a pretty nice cheese selection. Not quite Whole Foods but it's way, way cheaper

TJ's is significantly better value and less margin than Safeway. The opposite of "bougie."

TJ’s may be lower margin on what they carry than Safeway would be on comparable items; they achieve that by avoiding carrying lots of the low-margin items every other grocery store spends lots of money devoting floor space to.

(But those are things people tend to also need a lot, so TJ’s ends up being an extra shopping trip, instead of a replacement.)

I'm not convinced that the value is better. Most of the stuff at TJ's is reasonable quality, but the prices are often lower only because there's less product in the package. I'd have to sit down and compare unit prices before I could be assured you were getting a better value for your money.