What is a Trader Joe’s product that disappointed you?

42 comments

1. Their tomatillo salsa.

2. https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/dark-chocolate-bamba-snacks-072159

   The dark chocolate is doing the heavy lifting. I LOVE dark chocolate, so if it’s the main feature of this snack, I’d rather just eat straight dark chocolate.

   Their dark chocolate peanut butter and almond butter cups (two separate products) are amazing, though.

3. The Mixed Mushroom and Spinach Quiche. I never tried quiche before so thought it might be fun to make.

   Tbf, I’m not sure if their quiche sucked or if I just don’t like quiche

4. It is more the fact they don’t have butter I dislike. At least in mine they have an expensive vegan butter, but nothing else

5. the premarinated Chilean Sea Bass.

   but this was in like 2009.

6. I’m more disappointed that they discontinued selling Toasted Coconut Cookie Thins and replaced them with Triple Ginger Cookie Thins and Meyer Lemon Cookie Thins.

7. any of theirs I’ve tried. everyone treats them like they’re amazing but their stuff is mediocre crap.

8. Pretty much all of them lol Now that I live near one, I’ve gone 2-3 times now. Since everyone on social media is always hyping them up I really had high expectations.

   The frozen food I’ve tried is *so bland.* The snacks I can pretty much all get at a big-box store. Only thing, at this point, that I would go back for is the orange chicken

   This just my opinion, but I really think its just the aesthetic of the store most people really love. It’s much calmer and chill then say, Walmart

9. Watermelon Jerky

10. Never bought anything from there

11. Their beer

12. A lot of their sweets are just TOO sweet, and I’m not normally the type of person who complains about that. I got their almond butter covered almonds and I had to throw them out because they were nauseatingly sweet.

13. The entire store.

14. All of their shampoo sucks. Their face wash and other body products are pretty good, but their shampoo and conditioner can get bent. Awful.

15. Their rooibos tea. I’m still mad they stopped selling pumpernickel bread

16. The grits, because they discontinued them almost a year ago, and nothing has come in as a replacement.

17. TJ’s sells goofy novelty items that I treat differently – buyer beware, you know? I’m disappointed when they get a more common grocery item wrong.

    On that note, my answer is the orange chicken. Leaving flavor aside, which is nothing special, they packed some low grade chicken in that bag.

18. They’re pastry puffs were delicious but now all I taste is a grease ball whenever I have them.

19. Never went in. Not enough parking. It had Walmart-level traffic with a Walgreens-sized parking lot. HEB/Central Market is the ticket.

20. Their taco seasoning

21. The cereal (except the peanut butter puffins tho, those are great)

22. The Oreo knock off thingies, they’re called “Joe Joe’s” or something. They’re just bad.

23. I was hyped on two buck chuck from reputation, then I had some. Yuck

24. Fruit leather wraps. They taste like old crusty jelly around the rim.

25. The frozen orange chicken. Had an ex that was obsessed with it, I thought it was barely edible. Mostly fatty pieces and the sauce wasn’t that great.

26. Their licorice is plasticky

27. The frozen honey walnut shrimp entree. The sauce is vile

28. Their kimchi was terrible.

29. The well whiskey is terrible

30. Seems obvious, but their parking lot.

31. I got their lemon ricotta ravioli one time and it was weirdly super bitter? It was like they had grated the white pith into the ricotta rather than the actual peel. They also have some Thai shrimp pot stickers that were very disappointing.

    That said I could subsist on their bruschetta sauce alone and I’ve liked pretty much all of their potato chips

32. Serious question, I’ve never been to Trader Joe’s, what are they know for?

33. The honey walnut shrimp. It tastes nasty to me.

34. All of the produce, at least at my local store.

35. Back in the late 00s they tried to sell bags of freeze dried orange slices. Basically they tasted like flavorless plastic.

36. Recently got some frozen mini baguettes. They were more like breadsticks and were bad. Not even good with the bruschetta sauce.

37. I mean, pretty much everything except their wine. I don’t mean their five-buck-Chuck (that kind of sucks). But most of their reds (especially the pinot blacks) in the $10 range are an awesome bargain. They’ve got wine-loving buyers that do a fantastic job sourcing their wines.

    The problem is everything else:

    – The parking lot is too small and crowded.

    – 90% of the store is prepackaged junk food and frozen junk food. There are very few ingredients for actually making good and nutritious food.

    – The produce section is a couple of baskets. If all you need are tomatoes, onion, and potatoes, well, then I guess it’s okay. Where is the eggplant, daikon, jicama, variety of chile peppers, etc.?

    – The meat selection sucks, and some of it’s deceptive. “Filet” that’s not filet, but some cheap cut that’s disguised as filet, labeled as filet, but is really garbage meat.

    But, hey, I get the target audience. People that don’t cook and like to eat junk food but are too cool for Little Debbie and Lay’s.

38. I don’t even remember the name of it, which I regret for this comment. But they used to have this really awesome frozen burrito. My entire office absolutely loved those things.

    Easy way to be the hero of the office for the day, when we’re all stuck in endless meetings?

    Offer to pop out for a minute and get one of those burritos for everyone? 30 minutes later I’m the goddam heroic champion of the office.

    Until the day TJs stopped stocking those burritos.

    You let me down TJs. I had to go back to being good at my job again. Which is way more work.

39. This burrata ravioli. The cheese inside had a texture that was so unappealing that I didn’t finish what I had cooked and threw all of it away.

40. Literally everything. Garbage in cute packaging

41. Their salsa

42. Joe’s Os cereal is a no-go for me.