Joe Coulombe, Founder And Namesake Of Trader Joe's, Dies At 89
The original Trader Joe, who died Friday, opened the first store in 1967 with oddball nautical decor and a guiding principle: "Trader Joe's is for overeducated and underpaid people."
The idea, when stated simply, doesn't exactly scream "grocery empire." Yet that's just what became of the maritime-themed specialty market that Joe Coulombe first opened in 1967 in Pasadena, Calif. — which, in the decades that followed, blossomed into a web of hundreds of locations in dozens of states.
On Friday, more than three decades after he retired from the chain that still bears his name, Coulombe died in Pasadena at the
