Whilst other big box chains stepped into 2025 by making the decision to shut down branches, Trader Joe’s, a popular grocery chain, who has spent the previous year opening up multiple new locations, plans to open up even more stores this year.
Trader Joe’s is not your average joe
in 2024 alone, the grocery chain unveiled 30 new stores across the states. This is triple the amount of additions from the prior year. One month into 2025 and the company already has plans for a dozen more stores in the pipeline.
2024 bore witness to a massive growth spurt for the company as they launched a total of 34 new stores. This is a particularly notable feat when you consider how retail competitors like Walmart and Macy’s have been closing down stores in the dozens.
Comparisons made by Grocery Dive have shown that last year’s uptick in store openings amounts to more than five times the amount opened in 2022 and triple the number the grocer debuted in 2023. Trader Joe’s is keeping up the rapid pace of store growth, with plans already in place this year for around a dozen locations.
The previous year saw store growth mainly concentrated to the back end of the year with the vast majority of 23 locations opening between October and December of 2024. October was host to the highest number of openings (as compared from month to month) with 12 new stores opened.
Trader Joe’s is of the belief that focusing their expansion strategy around bolstering its presence in existing markets rather than entering new states will be most beneficial for the company and the proof is in the pudding.
The grocer welcomed new locations in 18 of the 42 states and Washington D.C. where they already had operations running.
Plans for California
Most of the new location openings for 2024 were concentrated in California. It seems that was not enough for the Golden State since the company still has three more stores listed to open there.
Ten new stores were opened in California last year, with three more upcoming stores to be opened around the Los Angeles area. The company has not yet shared the exact dates on which these locations will open but they are scheduled for some time during 2025. The new stores will be located in the Tarzana, Northridge and Sherman Oaks areas around Los Angeles.
The state’s central and southern regions, mainly around major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego was almost exclusively the scene for the expansions to take place in. There is also one other location up north in Roseville, Sacramento.
California is home to almost 200 Trader Joe’s store, a figure that makes up approximately one third of the total stores in the U.S. so it is no surprise that the company is placing its focus on California.
2025 Plans
The grocery chain began the year with a whopping total of 579 locations spanning across 42 states and it appears that they intend to maintain this momentum of expansions.
There are a dozen stores slated to be opened across the country this year. Each state will see a majority of the news stores near major cities of each respective state. The focus for upcoming locations is on both coasts. So far stores are planned for New York City’s Tottenville neighborhood and three in the greater Washington, D.C., area as well as two scheduled for Washington state and three in California.
Almost half of all Trader Joe’s stores are located in California, New York, Florida and Washington state, according to Grocery Dive.
Perhaps competitor grocers like Walmart and Aldi need to take a page out of Trader Joe’s book so that they too can open new locations instead of closing existing ones.