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I blacked out at Trader Joe's again.

One minute I was walking in for bananas. The next minute I'm loading eleven bags of cauliflower gnocchi into my trunk, cradling a succulent I'll kill by Thursday, and wondering why I bought something called "Everything But The Elote" seasoning when I don't even know what an elote is.

This happens every time. And I've started to wonder…

Is this store doing something to me?

So I dug in. And the deeper I went, the weirder it got.

On paper, Trader Joe's is a business school case study in what not to do. No app. No loyalty program. No coupons. No self-checkout. A parking lot that seems specifically engineered to make you question your will to live.

Every "smart" grocery chain is investing billions in data tracking, personalized offers, and surveillance-level customer analytics.

Trader Joe's response? We don't even have a loudspeaker.

And yet. They do $16 billion in sales. They have the highest sales per square foot of any grocery chain in America. People don't just shop there, they evangelize. They wear the shirts. They bring back the tote bags from vacation like souvenirs.

How does a store win by doing the opposite of what every smart business does?

Let's get dumb.

In 1967, a guy named Joe Coulombe had a problem.

He was running a chain of convenience stores called Pronto Markets, and he was getting murdered by 7-Eleven. They were bigger. They were faster. They were everywhere.

Coulombe realized he couldn't out-7-Eleven 7-Eleven. So he did something strange.

He fled to the Caribbean.

Not to give up. To think. He spent weeks on a beach writing what he later called his "white paper", a manifesto predicting the rise of a new type of American consumer.

He called them "the overeducated and underpaid."

These were people with college degrees working jobs that didn't match their intelligence. Teachers. Journalists. Graduate students. People who had sophisticated taste but not sophisticated salaries.

Coulombe predicted this group would explode. And he was right. Within a decade, the percentage of Americans with college degrees doubled.

But here's the insight that turned a beach daydream into a $16 billion empire:

Every "dumb" thing about Trader Joe's is actually a trap.

Why won't they put in a loudspeaker?

Most grocery stores use intercoms constantly. "Cleanup on aisle five." "Manager to register three." It's efficient.

Trader Joe's banned loudspeakers entirely. Instead, employees ring a bell. One ring means open another register. Two rings means a question at the register. Three rings means a manager is needed.

Sounds inefficient. But here's what it actually does…

It makes the store feel like a market in a small town instead of a fluorescent warehouse. The bell sound is almost cozy. You're not in a corporation. You're in a place that has quirks.

Why do the employees wear Hawaiian shirts?

Because it makes you feel like you're not in a grocery store. You're on vacation. You're in a tiki bar that happens to sell frozen meals. Your guard is down. Your wallet is open.

Why is the store so small? Why is the parking lot a nightmare?

Because scarcity creates urgency. If the store feels cramped and the lot feels competitive, you subconsciously think, "This place must be popular. I better grab what I can before it's gone."

Why do products disappear without warning?

Trader Joe's discontinues items constantly, even popular ones. This drives customers insane. But it also turns every shopping trip into a treasure hunt. You never know what you'll find or what will be gone forever.

You're not pushing a cart through a store. You're a clever raccoon who just found gold in someone's recycling bin.

Business strategists have a term for what Trader Joe's does.

It's called counter-positioning.

The idea is simple:

Build your business in a way that competitors can't copy without destroying themselves.

Walmart could never do what Trader Joe's does. To match Trader Joe's, Walmart would have to shrink their stores by 90%. Fire most of their staff. Eliminate thousands of products. Abandon their entire data infrastructure.

It would be corporate suicide.

So they don't. They can't. And that's exactly the point.

Reactance (ree-AK-tans): A psychological phenomenon where people want something more when they're told they can't have it.

When Trader Joe's discontinues your favorite cookie butter, you don't just miss it. You become obsessed with it. You check every visit. You ask employees. You post about it online.

The scarcity makes you care more than abundance ever could.

Let's use it in a sentence:

"I experienced severe reactance when Trader Joe's discontinued the Everything But The Bagel Seasoned Smoked Salmon. I now have a Google alert set for its return and I am not ashamed."

This week, I want you to find a successful business that seems to be doing something objectively stupid.

Maybe it's the restaurant with no online reservations. Maybe it's the coffee shop that doesn't have WiFi on purpose. Maybe it's the brand that never runs sales.

Ask yourself: What if the stupid thing is actually the strategy?

What looks like a limitation might be the moat.