Fall 2017

Trader Joe’s
Spurns a Lover
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Not many grocery stores can
boast the loyalty of fans of
Trader Joe’s. If you are not
fortunate enough to live near
a TJ’s store, you may not
understand what makes them
so special. The stores are
full of personality, and—even
more significantly—they excel
in offering their own brand of
juice flavors, frozen vegetable
mixes, snacks, and convenience
foods. Unlike other
grocery stores whose private
store brand products tend
to be of a lesser quality than
the higher priced name brand
products, TJ private labeled
foods are reliably delicious,
original and largely unique.
Canadian customer Mike
Hallatt loves Trader Joe’s
with such a passion, that he
would make special trips to
the U.S. just to stock up on
his favorite items and bring
them back to his home in
Vancouver. One fateful day
at the Trader Joe’s in Bellingham
WA, he realized that a
large number of shoppers in
the store were fellow Canadians,
and the lightbulb went
off: Why not open a store in
Vancouver and stock it with
Trader Joe’s products purchased
in the U.S.?
Thus was born the idea for
Pirate Joe’s.
For years, Pirate Joe’s was
the only storefront in Canada
that sold Trader Joe’s groceries.
The store’s décor had hints of the
jaunty vibe of a real Trader Joe’s,
but it also had a subversive feel to
it, which added to the attraction.
Although Hallatt never misrepresented
what he was doing and
took great care to comply with all
the intricate rules imposed by two
sovereign nations regarding ex-
port, import and
sale of foods in
Canada, the real
Trader Joe’s took
a highly adversarial
posture and harassed
him with every legal tool at their
disposal until he finally waved
the white flag in June of 2017.
It’s a tragic story filled with
love, pathos, and determination
where the little guy triumphs
but then gets knocked down
again. For Hallatt, it was never
about the money. It’s hard
to get rich hiring Americans
to shop for you, paying retail
prices for merchandise that you
then have to transport across
a border, add compliant food
labeling and merchandise in
a Canadian brick-and-mortar
facility. The markup Hallatt
charged could never be high
enough to do more than keep
the whole enterprise afloat.
No, it was never about the
money. It was more like the
mountain that needed to be
climbed “because it was
there.” It was thrilling to
do something so on the
fringes of legality and
propriety yet somehow
noble. Hallatt had made
it clear that he would
shut down his store the
minute Trader Joe’s entered
the Canadian market—he even
offered to gift the company his
labeling equipment.
But the suits at TJ’s doggedly
fought Hallatt and his store
from the moment they found
out what he was up to. They
threw him out of their stores,
sent cease and desist letters,
filed lawsuits, appealed the verdicts
when they lost, and wore
him down until he finally ran out
of resources.
“It was a great run while it
lasted,” wrote Hallatt on the
piratejoes.ca website. “I’m
mostly relieved and genuinely
stoked to jump into something
way less uncertain. Normal,
even! If you have any ideas or
you are a CEO looking for a
troublemaker…”
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