I MADE IT TO DAY 300 OF THIS PROJECT!!!!
And hey, we went to ANOTHER NEW TRADER JOE’S! That is 21 locations visited so far since
January 1st of this year. This
one was in Bethesda, MD (a suburb of Washington DC). It is an oddly
set up store! There is construction of
some sort going on outside (in the parking garage I think). The parking is free, which is nice. Sadly, there is no real signage outside the
store to draw people in. We had to
really look around to find the store (we had the address programmed into GPS so
knew we were there, but where WAS it??).
Whew, we found it! |
Outside what we think is supposed to be the main entrance of the store. Check out the great flowers David got me! |
BUT let’s ignore the physical set up of the store and
focus instead on the employees - which were super nice. We met one really great employee and I WISH I
had written her name down but I didn’t. I
hope she sees this and replies! She was
back by the sampling station and was super friendly. I told her about the blog and about this
being our 21st Trader Joe’s to visit for the project and she thought
it was cool, then asked if we had tried the new Turkey and Stuffing Seasoned
Kettle Chips.
Ummmmm, that would be an n-o…
Does THAT look like a chip you see and think "Yum, I must have it"?? |
David doesn’t like kettle chips (too hard and crunchy)
and I don’t normally like oddly flavored chips.
I want plain, simple, humble chips, thank you very much!
She saw us wrinkle our noses up after she mentioned these
and grabbed a bag saying, “Wanna try ‘em??”.
I need to pause in the review here to remind you all
again – you can TRY stuff at Trader Joe’s.
It is an excellent policy. It goes
beyond being “customer focused”. Seriously,
it is great! We hadn’t even ASKED to try
these, in fact I am guessing that our facial expressions were asking to NOT try
them. But she took it upon herself to
grab a bag and open them. She took the
bag to the sampling station and had the lady working there put a few chips in
little paper cups for us to taste.
And do you know what?
It resulted in a sale. That is
$1.99 that Trader Joe’s would NEVER have gotten out of us. We didn’t even see these chips before she mentioned them (display note: those are up too high for short people to see
on the rack in the back of the store, move ‘em down). And even if we HAD seen them, trust me, we
would not have purchased them if she didn’t give us a taste. And I am guessing the one bag of open chips
resulted in other sales, too, since the sample lady was going to serve the rest
to other people. My totally unscientific
guess is that 7 out of 10 times when they go out of their way and open
something especially for a customer to taste it results in a sale.
It turns out they are GOOD! |
So here is our review of these wacky chips:
Susan – These are a good example of grocery shopping when
you are hungry. We left with a product
we might never have bought. But honestly,
we bought it because of the “taste test” policy mostly. The first bite of these chips is a little bit
startling. Even the smell of it, really! It is a
CHIP that smells like TURKEY. That’s
bizarre!! But this chip really does capture the taste of
Thanksgiving! You can taste turkey,
stuffing, and whatever herb is in stuffing (I think it is sage). They are crunchy but not as crunchy as some
kettle chips which is good. This is a
fun seasonal product! When the lady
showed us the bag David said he thought Trader Joe’s had “jumped the shark”. I mean, like, seriously… You are going to do TURKEY AND STUFFING
CHIPS??? But he liked them, too! He even wanted to open the bag and munch on
them on the way home!
David – “It is true!
And like Susan said, they are not too “gum tearing up crunchy” like
kettle chips sometimes are, which is good.
They are easy on the turkey flavor, which I don’t even know what turkey
flavor would be, cuz turkey is essentially a flavorless meat… But the whole taste is the EXPERIENCE of a
nice turkey dinner. A little bit of
turkey, some stuffing, and maybe it is sage I am tasting in addition.”
These are a cool seasonal item. They are a fun alternative to the plethora of
pumpkin that is vomited everywhere this time of year. We will enjoy the heck out of this one bag
then call it an autumn.
Buy these as an alternative to loads of pumpkin
crap.
Price - $1.99
Rating - 4
I'm jealous. I knew about this product from people on Twitter talking about it. But I went to my store today and they had already SOLD OUT!
ReplyDeleteSOLD OUT??? Dang it. Sorry... And the store we were in wasn't even displaying them very well - had they been maybe ours would have been sold out, too!
DeleteI'm jealous. I knew about this product from people on Twitter talking about it. But I went to my store today and they had already SOLD OUT!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt seems we will have to disagree again:
ReplyDeletehttp://exploringtraderjoes.blogspot.com/2015/11/trader-joes-turkey-and-stuffing.html
Well are you at least happy that you got to TRY them??? :)
DeleteOh, yeah--definitely. When there's a new product that is completely wacky and unprecedented, so that I really have no idea what to expect, I love getting to try it and find out whether it's wonderful, awful, or something in between.
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