Explain The Corporate Culture Of Trader Joe's

This paper is about Trader Joes corporation’s organizational culture and the various challenges that the corporation has faced recently. One of the main problems for Trader Joe’s, is that when it was sold to Aldi groceries (Albrecht family) the stores concept started to become more like a corporate franchise.

Trader Joe’s was founded by a guy named Joe Coulombe in 1967 under the idea of being a store that offered products aimed at sophisticated costumers interested in finding good bargains and products that are natural and organic, and not typically found in general supermarkets. Although, there are many changes that happened with the company and the industry since 1967, Trader Joe’s is still going strong with the way they do things whether it be on the customers’ aspect or the employees’ aspect. However, as Trader Joe’s tries to implement new processes and procedures, things start to shake the very foundation of the company itself like growing bureaucracy that the company never has, or the increased competition between employees who try to advance

This paper is intended to explore the work ethic and value of Trader Joe’s as a company and their employees. Hands-on top managers have always been insistent in the company. Now, CEO Dan Bane created the values to reflect on the original traditions of its founder. When reading through the accomplishments of this grocery store, I was pleasantly surprised that they have managed to keep their integrity during their growth. Being a customer at Trader Joe’s myself, I find myself thinking about all the good experiences I have had every time I visited the store. Trader Joe’s has grown from a “mom and pop” grocery to a worldwide chain. Their integrity for selling a good product at a good price with great customer has proven them to be one of the grocery stores to be in high completion with other retailers in their genre. Their focus on giving their customers the options of different goods and the smiling faces of their friendly employees has risen them to a higher level of grocery shopping.

A strong culture is said to exist where staff respond to stimulus because of their alignment to organizational values. (Dayton Business Journal website, 2002, para 1) Therefore, the Hearthside can be said to have a strong organizational culture. This is demonstrated through the employee’s dedication to the same goal of providing quality service. This can be seen through Gail as she attempted to provide extra croutons on the salad, waitresses using tip money to provide a customer with a meal, the cooks cooking the food in a quality way and having the food out on-time, and even the dishwashers taking some sort of pride in accomplishing the dishes in a timely matter. Ironically the biggest detriment to providing quality service at the Hearthside was management and their stingy policies, which demand a mandated amount of sour cream or croutons.

2. Trader Joe’s is a consumer retail grocery store that started in 1967 in Pasadena, California. Joe Columbe founded Trader Joe’s and has been succeeded by John Shields in 1987. Under John command in 1983 they expanded into Arizona and then 2 years later to the Pacific Northwest. Then in 1996 they opened their first store on the east coast just outside of Boston. Shields retired in 2001 and was succeeded by Dan Bane. As of April 2015, Trader Joe’s had 457 locations in 25 states (Llopis, 2011)and is adding new locations regularly. They are reluctant to growth too fast but rather develop a good reputation with the general vicinity of its locations.

Trader Joe’s has internally created a brand for its company using a different strategy as compared to other supermarkets. Its approach of effective relationship-building program pleases customers through unrivaled customer service. This case study presents many factors that play a part in their customer relations strategy. Trader Joe’s does not focus on advertising. Rather, it focuses on effective internal communications with employees to build strong customer relationships. Trader Joe’s takes a progressive approach to internal communications by allowing their employees to bring their own creativity to the workplace, by providing them with the context in which their role contributes to the business success, and asking for employees

What is important to note is that success of Trader Joe’s hinges on the store environment and the customer experience. Leadership is essential for maintaining this climate of good fun, good food, and great value. Leadership in the store must set the example for subordinates to follow. Without all of the crew members working to foster a climate which draws a faithful customer base, the brand will likely find itself struggling to bring in revenue for continued operation. The reason for this conclusion, there are too many other grocery stores available with larger selections, cheaper prices, poor attitudes, and equally mundane in ambiance.

A good culture encompassing strong values, vision, morale’s and beliefs and behaviours expressed by employers and employees of an organisation can be the driver of the overall performance of a company. A good culture can help support the implementation of changes and new initiatives and are likely to be supported by those involved.

Best Buy, Inc. strong culture and values consists of the following things as per the definitions in Chapter 18 of the textbook: Strong culture being the organizations core values which are intensely held and widely shared throughout the company. It also usually comes with subcultures as the book discusses also in Chapter 18, which are broken down into each individual department by geographic location and are often called mini-cultures. This definition of organizational culture broken down is these simple 7 characteristics, and Best Buy follows these characteristics by doing the following. On the first characteristic of innovation and risk taking, Best Buy’s employees are encouraged to take risks and be

According to Robbins and Judge, organizational culture is, “a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations” (Robbins 249). A strong organizational culture is one whose organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. After viewing Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, it is obvious that Enron had not only an organizational culture that was strong, but one that was extreme and aggressive. This aggressive and strong organizational culture discouraged both teamwork and ethical behavior and in the end it only plagued Enron until it eventually collapsed under its downfall.

When entering a grocery store, most people don’t take the time to stop and observe their surroundings, for their soul purpose at that instant is to purchase what very food they may need for that day or maybe even for that week. However, through all the haste of wanting to go in and out of grocery stores as fast as one can, most are unaware of the very culture that they too are now apart of, the interactions, both verbal and through people’s body language that they are experiencing, how people look and dress, even what is considered appropriate behavior although not specifically written down. Culture is all around us, and we all contribute to it, whether it is through our norms, values, symbols, or mental maps of reality (Guest 2014, 38-43). That is why through this assignment, I took the time to observe the culture experienced in the American grocery store Stater Brothers, the ethnical Filipino grocery store Seafood City, while also taking the time to reflect on my own personal views of what I thought was “normal” through my experience working in Northgate Gonzalez Market, a Mexican grocery store for three years.

Not only is a strong corporate culture good for business by increasing customer satisfaction, it also can help to decrease turnover and save on human resources expenditures. Internal integration should start the minute a new employee enters a company. Training of new employees should include some way of helping them to understand the company's culture. The new hire training program currently in use at Wal-Mart stores includes videos and other information about the founding of the company as well as other general and specific information about the company's culture as well as expectations related to this culture. This is important because a company's culture is not always easily apparent to newcomers and this is what keeps Wal-mart's culture strong (Berg, 2001).

After reading this it makes me want to be a manager for Trader Joe's. There making a lot of money. But with the workers that work for them there given a lot of benefits with all the health, dental, vision and etc. Also they're given promotions from within philosophy because they're privately own. Also they tell there employees to try the produce so when someone has a question about something they can take them to something that is something there thinking about or better. Trader Joe’s has designed jobs to increase job satisfaction by showing appreciation in providing more benefits to their employees than other chain grocers.

Corporate culture is a key component to the success of Starbucks. When looking at the seven dimensions of corporate culture (fn textbook pg 338) Starbucks emphasizes Team and People Orientation along with Innovation and Risk-Taking and pose less emphasis on a competitive environment or an outcome oriented approach. (see appendix c) In order to ensure a strong corporate culture Starbucks utilizes innovative and simple ways to ensure the key values are deeply held and widely shared. (fn) By visiting up to 40 stores weekly by the CEO Richard Schultz, creation of Starbucks Broadcast News to convey company news, or administering an “attitude survey” every 18 months to all employees they ensure the company and its partners (employees) are connected. (fn textbook)

A strong organizational culture provides both the company and its employees with direction and stability. The culture within an organization can be powerful enough to effect employee attitude and behavior as well as performance and turnover ratio. According to many scientific studies, there are seven primary characteristics used to define the culture of an organization: innovation and risk taking, outcome orientation, people orientation, team orientation, aggressiveness and stability.