How much are you willing to pay for that?

As long as the place is clean and well stocked with fresh items, anything else is worth approximately 0% to 5% to me.

I am willing to pay more to save time. I like my Trader Joes because I can browse every aisle in a matter of minutes. It's also a good place to discover new food items. Finally, this is a personal pet peeve of mine, but I am willing to pay more to not have a shopping cart with a bad or noisy wheel.

They choose more expensive shops arguing better variety or quality but in reality they just want to be in that group buying in more expensive brand shop, walking the same corridors as welthier or more wasteful people. In small towns they are afraid of being noticed by neighbours in cheaper shops - despite it being logically right place to see them, they feel their opportunities and prestige rises when they meet their boss in the same shop. It escalated into creation of galleries milking young generation greedy of showing off. If displaying a hologram of your social media avatar with qrcode above your head was possible they would pay to do this, the more expensive it would be the more eagerly. But of course there is also the middle class's deep wisdom of "the poor can't afford paying twice for a product" - pointing out modern quality problem. But every reason in time gets covered by a custom, for longer than reason exists.

There's a big difference between "grocery store is clean and nice" and "grocery store is setup in a cruel imitation of Ikea designed to force you to wander past every single endcap in an attempt to milk you for maximum dollars".

It's basically a digestive membrane. The parallels between the Ikea shop design and an intestinal tract is striking.

The shop staff would correspond to gastric enzymes.

And this is why I don't like Trader Joe's, even though every member of my family thinks I'm crazy. TJ's is a mini version of an Ikea escape room masquerading as a grocery store.

Trader Joe's is a zoo

In what way?

The last Trader Joe's I was in was set up roughly like this. https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/...

How big was the one you went to if they even had room to make a maze?

Where are you that your Trader Joe's are like this? Every one I've been in is set up just like a normal grocery store with aisles

There’s a high-end supermarket chain in California called Gelson’s. A guaranteed luxury shopping experience. Prices are 20-25% higher than Ralph’s and 15% higher than Whole Foods. Not worth it for me.