Talk:Trader Joe's/Archives/2020

We currently say Trader Joe's is the exclusive retailer of Charles Shaw wine, popularly known as "Two Buck Chuck" and it is referenced, but to a story written fifteen years ago. I have seen Charles Shaw wine in other stores, and I doubt that they are all resellers. For sure, there is a strong association between the two, but I dispute the claim that TJ's is exclusive. —Soap— 13:59, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Just posting to say that I edited the sentence to remove the word exclusive and it was reverted. All I can do is repeat myself ... the claim is based on an archived story, now sixteen years old. That's plenty of time for the situation to change. I remember asking a TJ's employee and he said that there were laws varying by state that might make TJ's the exclusive retailer in some US states but not in others. I have seen the wine for sale in other stores here in Maine, .... but I'm not going to intrude on store owners' privacy just to get a picture (which could be questioned even then, if people claimed the store was unauthorized). Is there anywhere we can go, either from Aldi/TJ's or elsewhere, saying that they are still the exclusive retailer of TJ's even today? —Soap— 17:19, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

In fact, now that I actually read the article, it never says that TJ's is the exclusive retailer at all. It only says "partners with wineries", which is what every distributor I know of does. I believe that we should either remove the sentence entirely or at least remove that one word, exclusive, which never appeared even in the story from January 2004. —Soap— 17:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I just noticed that I had brought this up five years ago on the talk:Charles Shaw wine page and said almost the exact same thing, even down to offering to take a photo and saying I'd rather not intrude on the storeowners' privacy, and then realizing after a few posts that the original source never claimed it was exclusive to TJ's at all. I completely forgot about those posts until just discovering them now. I think we should follow the lead of the Charles Shaw wine article, which mentions that Trader Joe's sells the wine but does not claim anywhere that it is an exclusive brand. —Soap— 22:57, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I have searched and could not find a single source -- reliable, unreliable, whatever -- that even HINTED that Charles Shaw wines are sold anywhere but Trader Joe's, but plenty that say Charles Shaw wines ARE sold only at Trader Joe's. If Charles Shaw wines are sold elsewhere, you should be able to provide SOME source other than "I once saw a bottle on some other store's shelf". Charles Shaw wines aren't even listed at the website for Bronco Wines -- the company that makes the stuff -- which is a very strange way to sell it outside of Trader Joe's. --Calton | Talk 00:39, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Please show me a reliable source, then, that indicates the Charles Shaw brand is exclusive to Trader Joe's. The January 2004 Deutsche Welle article does not say that, and I think we made a mistake ever writing that sentence into the article in the first place. I've traced the addition of the word "exclusive" to this IP edit in 2007, by which time the Deutsche Welle story had been in our article for quite some time. Thus, when the story was originally added, we stuck to the source and did not make the claim of exclusive sale. —Soap— 02:31, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Calton and Soap: I have been following this with fascination! First, Here's a source that called CSW "Exclusive to Trader Joe's. Here's another source that says "Since launching the business in 2002, Mr. Franzia has sold over one billion bottles of wine exclusively at the supermarket Trader Joe’s for just $1.99 each, causing it to soar in popularity and gain the moniker “Two-Buck Chuck.” Here is a third source that says "He (Charles Shaw) watched from the sidelines as the “super-value” wines marketed in his name — sold through an exclusive distribution deal with Trader Joe’s — became one of winemaking’s best-selling brands." A fourth source says "When contacted, a spokesperson for Trader Joe's said, "Charles Shaw is a label exclusive to Trader Joe’s." Second, in improving the article on Charles Shaw Wine I found many sources that describe what a gigantic operation Bronco Wines, which makes 2 buck chuck, actually is. They have produced hundreds of millions of bottles of wine, if not billions. One article stat, which seemed low, was that in 2008 they made 60,000 cases (720,000 bottles) every time that they ran a 2-3 day production run for Charles Shaw wine. One article mentioned a 40-acre staging area for trucks waiting to unload their grapes at the factory. It's not inconceivable that a pallet of it got diverted somewhere, or that someone bought it for $2 and is selling it for $5 in their own store. On the other hand, here we have multiple sources saying that TJ's is the exclusive seller. It's a pretty tiny thing to argue about. I have removed the somewhat contested Deutche Welle source, and added three of the best ones I just mentioned above. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 05:20, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

They are wrong. Newspapers can be wrong ... I once found a newspaper writing a story about sea lampreys using a photo that I added to a Wikipedia article, so it's conceivable, especially given that the IP's edit adding "exclusive" survived for thirteen years, it's that those sources simply copied from us. Stanford being a university doesn't automatically make them a reliable source for non-academic subjects like this, so they may have gotten it from us as well. It's even possible that the Trader Joe's spokesperson didn't know everything about his own company. But I understand the policy of Verifiability, not truth, and so even as I know the newer sources you've added are wrong, I won't restore my edit until I can find some other publication that shows there is conflicting information available.

Privately, I can intimate that I know I'm right, and that it isn't just one store, and it isn't just one pallet, because the corner store I go to has been selling Two Buck Chuck for at least five years now and I can't imagine him going to Trader Joe's with the same truck day after day for five years, loading up on wine, and not attracting attention. So either TJ's is unloading their product against company policy from within the store (unlikely), or the distributor that sells to TJ's does in fact contract out to other stores, even if in vastly smaller amounts. Now, I don't expect a corner store to have a website showing all of the wines they sell .... I'm more interested in the sentence that started the discussion on talk:Charles Shaw wine which mentioned the wine was sold at Kroger's, a much much larger operation than a neighborhood corner store. But that claim was quite old as well ... even if Kroger's sold the wine back then, they might not sell it now. So I will let this rest for a bit, and as above, only come back if I find credible information outside my own experience that conflicts with what we have now. —Soap— 05:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

How much does your corner store sell it for? In any case, you're certainly welcome to your opinion or theories, but the copious sourcing says otherwise. I don't doubt that you saw it for sale somewhere else, but you have no sourcing to prove Bronco distributes it somewhere else. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 05:55, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

PS: the Wine Spectator said in 2003 that when "Introduced a year ago, Two-Buck Chuck caught fire in December, and Trader Joe's, the brand's exclusive retailer..."ThatMontrealIP (talk) 06:01, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The corner store's price is $4.49, so it's a markup of $1.50 per bottle. The 2003 story is interesting but I wouldn't recommend adding it, as we have no assurance that something true seventeen years ago is still true today. I'm still interested in this, and so far I've collected two links ... one is Trader Joe's own humble website, which as of right now is featuring wine, and does not specifically claim that the label is exclusive to their store. The other is this news story from five years ago showing that Idaho has a state law like the one I'm familiar with here in Maine; I havent found Maine's statute yet, but the text of the Idaho law is available at this link. The gist of the Idaho Statesman article is that TJ's is the only store in Idaho that sells Charles Shaw wine, but they shouldn't be, according to state law.

My goal is to make the case that the stories claiming TJ's has exclusive access are incorrect. Nothing can be proven, but I plan to slowly gather information over the next few months to show at least that we have a genuine contradiction in sources where each side is thrown into doubt by the opposite. —Soap— 21:31, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Oh, a minor point I wanted to add .... people keep bringing up Bronco Wines and I keep ignoring it. My understanding is that the distributor is the company that drives the trucks full of wine (of many labels, from many producers) to each store. For example, in southern Maine, Charles Shaw wine is distributed by this company. Bronco Wines is a producer, not a distributor, and so they don't have full control of where their wine ends up, and may not even know where it all ends up. —Soap— 21:35, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

You're just engaging in original research at this point, making theories as to why something might be so, and synthesizing weak sources to prove a tenuous point. But I guess everyone has a right to that, as long as it not part of an article. Re distribution, the whole point of Trader Joes is to remove the middleman. there is no way that a $2.50 dollar of wine is going to go through a distributor. And now I am speculating too, so I'll stop.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 23:35, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

It would be illegal in the USA for Trader Joe's or any other retailer to buy wine directly from a winery; see Three-tier system (alcohol distribution). Our local Trader Joe's has to go through Nappi Distributors just like the corner store a few miles away. As to OR, yes I understand your point, and that is why I say I will not be editing the sentence in the article again until I can come up with evidence in favor of my point that is comparable to that against it. I am confident that I can find more than just the two links I found last night, but I'm not going to let it stress me out either, so it might be a while before I come back. Thanks for your insight, —Soap— 00:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

"Bronco also controls its own distribution company, Classic Wines of California, which gives Franzia and his relatives a leg up on the competition when it comes to getting their products onto store shelves."ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:52, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

 

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Per WP:CRITS, a criticism section should be avoided. And this one is a little problematic. Piece by piece:

1. Sustainability. This seems to need updating; at least according to this, the situation has changed since 2013.
2. Secretiveness. The "notoriously secretive" thing is out of context; and as the tag says, this needs updating.
3. Regarding the ACA, I see nothing in the paragraph which constitutes "criticism", or which is worth putting in the article.
4. Perhaps a section about labor relations might be worthwhile. But again, this is complaints rather than criticism.

Anyway, we should get rid of the "criticism" section on principle; we can have a sustainability section mentioning the changes over the years, and we could have a labor relations section discussing the dichotomies as in the NYT article. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 00:22, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with all of this. And while some people say we can balance it out with positive news media, there just aren't that many news outlets that are going to go and write a story telling us how great it is to shop at a particular supermarkets ... the company itself does that job. —Soap— 01:01, 13 March 2020 (UTC)