ABOUT HOW WE GOT TO THE TRADER JOE’S OPENING
It’s finally for real. know 100 percent for certain and beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trader Joe’s is coming to Germantown. And when – it’s not long, Sept. 14. The California-based grocer finally announced the opening date Aug. 31. here? Here are five things to know about the long and winding road that led us to the Trader Joe’s door.
First look
After a seemingly endless wait, we
Trader Joe’s first showed interest in the Memphis market with word of a possible Germantown opening in late 2016, which soon turned to 2017.
References to a Germantown store came and went from the So how did we get chain’s website.
Fans of the store, hungry for a local taste of what they’d experienced in other cities, meanwhile, kept waiting and watching. Fans even lobbied on social media to get the chain here through the Bring Trader Joe’s to Memphis Facebook page.
The possibility began feeling more concrete by late 2017, by which time the store’s arrival had become the worst-kept secret around.
“We don’t really know as fact (that Trader Joe’s is coming),” Blair Parker of Blair Parker Design said after Germantown aldermen approved a development contract in December 2017 for the property at 2130 Exeter, site of the old Kroger. “They haven’t told us. I think I know, but I don’t really know.”
Getting red hot
An application for a building permit filed in February of this year may have been the clincher. It
seemed certain at that point that the store would happen. The only question was how soon.
Local fans began getting ready, in the meantime.
Kelli Ciaramitaro told The Commercial Appeal about the time the building permit was filed that she was more than ready to stop being a long-distance Trader Joe’s customer.
She said she became a fan while visiting family and friends in Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, Tucson, Arizona, and Washington, D.C.
Ciaramitaro said she had been “bringing car loads of goods from other locations .... What was not driven home was packed in a suitcase and checked in on whatever flight I was on.”
Signs that it’s coming
On the heels of the building permit, Germantown began considering signage for the store.
The city’s Design Review Commission did a little haggling with Trader Joe’s representatives over a design that would conform to the city’s standards while retaining the familiar Trader Joe’s look.
A Hawaiian shirt-clad Trader Joe’s representative was even on hand at a February subcommittee meeting of the Design Review Commission to answer questions.
It’s here
In August, the familiar red letters went up over the entrance of the store, spelling out Trader Joe’s clearly for all to see.
At the same time, store representatives said opening would be in September, though the precise date wasn’t announced until Aug. 31.
When the doors open at 8 a.m. on Sept. 14, shoppers can expect to find the chain’s familiar grocery items, along with beer and wine and a Memphis feel.