Do you enjoy food shopping? We often don’t. The lines are long, the store lighting is glaring, and there’s always someone who leaves a cart in the middle of the aisle so that you can’t pass. But if you’re lucky enough to live near a Trader Joe’s, you might have a very different experience when purchasing groceries: employees smile and recommend their favorite salsa, food prices remain reasonable despite nationwide increases, and the colorful South Seas décor gives the place a bold, fun appearance. This is because Trader Joe’s has developed an organizational culture that values a friendly, neighborhood feel while offering quality food from all over the world at seemingly reasonable prices.

One of the ways that Trader Joe’s forms and ensures its cultural values is through organizational storytelling, the communication of the company’s values through stories and accounts, both externally (to an outside audience) and internally (within the company). An organization telling a story isn’t so different from a parent telling a story to a young child. Just as fairy tales and children’s books teach kids important lessons, like the dangers of talking to strangers, organizational stories help would-be customers and potential members answer the question “What is this company all about?” or “Why should I support or join this organization?” They also help employees and current members of an organization understand why they work for a company or support a particular organization (Aust, 2004; Boje, 1991). James and Minnis (2004) also note that when the organization is a for-profit business, “Good communicators use storytelling to sell products, generate buy-in and develop and cultivate corporate culture” (p. 26).

What Trader Joe’s stories communicate and shape its organizational culture? First, consider the store’s South Pacific ambiance: the employees wear Hawaiian shirts, and hand-lettered signs feature tropical icons like palm trees and coconuts. Trader Joe’s also tells stories of its ability to acquire fine merchandise at low prices—someone with really nice penmanship takes the time to write puns on a giant chalkboard (“Leaf it to us to give you your favorite bagged salads”). Trader Joe’s Web site and newsletter (Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer) present fun drawings, facts about the company, and cleverly written highlights of featured products. (Is anyone up for some Spanish gazpacho soup or Lemon Raspberry Zinger Bundt cake?)

In addition, like many successful organizations, Trader Joe’s makes use of metaphors in its storytelling. A metaphor is a figure of speech that likens one thing to something else in a literal way, although there is no literal connection between the two (Jacobs & Heracleous, 2006). Trader Joe’s metaphor is, essentially, “We are a ship.” The employees at Trader Joe’s are all crew members, including the captain (store manager) and the first mate (assistant store manager) (Lewis, 2005). Each member is essential to keeping the ship running, which makes for friendly employees and happy customers.

Trader Joe’s also makes use of stories about organizational heroes, individuals who have achieved great things for the organization through persistence and commitment, often in the face of great risk (James & Minnis, 2004; Schulman, 1996). Trader Joe’s employees and would-be customers alike all learn about “Trader Joe” himself, a Stanford University M.B.A. graduate named Joe Coulombe who opened a chain of Pronto Market convenience stores in the Los Angeles area during the 1950s. In the 1960s, 7-Eleven stores invaded southern California, threatening to crush Joe’s business. Rather than admit defeat, Coulombe changed his tactics: trusting that the burgeoning airline industry would entice more Americans to travel—and that those Americans would want to find the foods they enjoyed abroad once they were back home—Coulombe began stocking imported foods other convenience stores didn’t carry. Thus began the first Trader Joe’s in 1967 (Hoover, 2006).