Halfmoon’s Trader Joe’s
Niche grocery chain picks Halfmoon site; opening date unclear
After months of speculation, store under construction in The Crossings is a Trader Joe’s.
After months of speculation, Trader Joe’s is building a store in The Crossings in Halfmoon, Supervisor Kevin Tollisen said.
It will be the Capital Region’s second location of the popular niche grocer, which has 19 other stores across New York. Trader Joe’s first Capital Region store, on Wolf Road in Colonie, opened Aug. 3, 2012.
“We are very excited for this for Halfmoon,” Tollisen said. “Even in a COVID pandemic climate, businesses are coming to Halfmoon ... Certainly, it will be welcomed by the residents.”
The stores are known for their quirky attributes, from crew members in Hawaiian shirts to inexpensive wines and other items. The Capital Region’s first store arrived in part
thanks to the efforts of a local college professor, Bruce Roter, who waged a multiyear effort.
Now, the Capital Region will have two.
As first reported by the Albany Business Review, the store is expected to be 12,500 square feet and be built on 4.83 acres of vacant land next to Berkshire Bank. Richard Harris, coordinator of the town’s planning department, said they are uncertain when the store will
open.
“They are moving pretty quick,” Harris said. “It will open sooner rather than later.”
Harris said the town just learned that it was a Trader Joe’s when the store presented plans for the building ’s interior.
“The engineer and the landowner had a nondisclosure agreement,” Harris said. “That’s OK, but one of our Planning Board members said
it was consistent with a Trader Joe’s.”
That led to months of speculation that the building plan was for a Trader Joe’s.
There is already an Aldi around the corner from the Halfmoon site as well as a nearby Market 32 grocery and Walmart and Target stores that also sell groceries. But Tollisen said the Trader Joe’s will be an excellent addition.
“This is a unique grocery store, with a different product line,” Tollisen said. “A lot of people are passionate about Trader Joe’s.”
Trader Joe’s is operated by the European company Aldi Nord, which also operates Aldi stores in northern Germany and
in the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Spain, while the Aldi store across Route 9 from the new Trader Joe’s is operated by Aldi Sud, which operates Aldi stores in southern Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and China, as well as the U.S., according to trade publication Winsight Grocery Business.
The two branches have operated separately for at least 60 years, apparently after a disagreement between the founding Albrecht brothers, the trade publication said. But both have lagged in the development of e-commerce, and earlier this month the two branches formed a partnership to close the ecommerce gap, according to the German trade publication Lebensmittel Zeitung.