Joe Coulombe, founder of popular Trader Joe's markets, dies
Source: AP
By JOHN ROGERS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.
So he found a new way to bring everything from a then-exotic snack food called granola to the California-produced wines that for flavor compared with anything from France. And he made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky little grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.”
From the time he opened his first store in Pasadena, California, in 1967 until his death Friday at age 89, Coulombe watched his namesake business rise from a cult favorite of educated but underpaid young people — and a few hippies — to a retail giant with more than 500 outlets in over 40 states.
A giant yes, but one that across more than half a century has never lost its reputation for friendly service from employees decked out in goofy Hawaiian shirts, a newsletter that looks like it was published in the 1890s, and rows and rows of high-quality, moderately priced healthy food and great wine, even if you sometimes can’t ever again find exactly the same thing.
This circa 1985 photo provided by Esme Gibson shows Joe Coulombe, the founder of the Trader Joe's market chain, at his home in Pasadena, Calif. Coulombe, the man who created Trader Joe's markets with a vision that college-educated but poorly paid young people would buy healthy foods if they could only afford them, has died. Coulombe's family says he died Friday, Feb. 28, 2020 at age 89. He opened the first of his quirky, nautically themed markets in Pasadena, California, in 1967. He stocked it with granola, organic foods and other items he bought directly from suppliers to hold prices down. Trader Joe's now has more than 500 stores in over 40 states. (Image by Esme via AP)
Read more: https://apnews.com/7e58cf76e73aba70736081a06e2715fa
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California Gold is local PBS?
On very rare occasions you can catch an early program of him interviewing celebs who spent weekends at a Palm Springs mobile home park which was owned by Bing Crosby. My parents moved to Palm springs in 1966 and I vaguely recall the entertainers who had mobile homes there.
His early programs are Gold.
Last edited Tue Mar 3, 2020, 08:29 PM - Edit history (1)
that can be composted, or recycled.
After China stopped giving us a lazy, easy way out by taking piles of our dirty so-called recyclables (from the west end of the U.S., anyway) there should be a great effort to figure out food and other packaging that doesn't sit buried in landfills for years and years, possibly outlasting we who bought the packaged stuff!
When the local garbage & recycling company took most plastic as long as it had a recycling symbol I used to buy yogurt, and sometimes "clamshell" #1 box of baby greens/spinach, or occasionally little pastries at Trader Joe's or Safeway.
I haven't bought those things since the garbage company said they only take narrow neck plastic bottles to recycle. Seeing so much plastic while shopping is depressing! 
