Trader Joe’s Just Did What No Grocery Store Would

00:00 Trader Joe's doesn't look like a grocery

00:02 store that changes industries. It's

00:04 small. It's quirky. It sells cookie

00:07 butter and frozen mandarin chicken and a

00:09 rotating cast of seasonal items that

00:11 people genuinely lose their minds over

00:14 every fall. The parking lots are a

00:16 disaster. The aisles are too narrow. And

00:19 the employees are so relentlessly

00:21 cheerful that after 20 minutes, you

00:23 start wondering if something is being

00:24 added to the samples. But what just

00:27 happened inside that store is going to

00:29 cost major food manufacturers real

00:31 money, force a conversation about

00:34 ingredient transparency that the

00:35 industry has been successfully dodging

00:37 for decades, and redefine what a grocery

00:40 store is actually allowed to promise its

00:42 customers. Here's what they did, why the

00:45 industry didn't see it coming, and what

00:47 it changes about everything in your

00:48 cart.

00:50 To understand what Trader Joe's just

00:52 did, you have to understand what makes

00:54 Trader Joe's fundamentally different

00:56 from every other grocery store in

00:57 America. And the difference isn't the

00:59 prices, although the prices are

01:01 genuinely good. And it's not the

01:03 selection, although the selection is

01:05 genuinely strange in the best possible

01:07 way. The difference is the model. Trader

01:10 Joe's runs on private label almost

01:12 exclusively. Walk into a Kroger and you

01:15 see a thousand national brands with a

01:17 Kroger store brand tucked in alongside

01:20 them. Walk into a Trader Joe's and

01:22 almost everything in the store is a

01:24 Trader Joe's product. The store is the

01:27 brand. The brand is the store. There is

01:30 no separation between the two. That

01:33 model was built by Joe Kulom who opened

01:35 the first Trader Joe's in Pasadena,

01:37 California in 1967.

01:40 Colom had a specific vision. He wanted

01:42 to create a store for overeducated,

01:44 underpaid people. His actual words. He

01:47 believed that a segment of the American

01:49 consumer was smart enough to want

01:51 quality and savvy enough to question

01:53 whether they needed to pay a premium to

01:55 get it. He read a study predicting that

01:57 Americans with college degrees would

01:59 travel more frequently and develop more

02:01 sophisticated taste preferences. He

02:04 decided to build a store for that person

02:06 before anyone else in grocery retail had

02:08 thought to. He eliminated the brands,

02:11 cut the variety, controlled the supply

02:13 chain, and passed the savings to a

02:15 customer who felt like they were in on

02:17 something nobody else had figured out

02:18 yet. That feeling is the product. It has

02:22 been the product for nearly 60 years,

02:25 and it is a more durable competitive

02:27 advantage than any slotting arrangement

02:28 or loyalty program the conventional

02:31 grocery industry has ever designed.

02:33 because it is built on something the

02:34 conventional grocery industry

02:36 fundamentally does not understand, which

02:38 is that some consumers want to feel

02:40 respected by the store they shop at more

02:43 than they want to feel rewarded by it.

02:45 The Hawaiian shirts came later. So did

02:48 the crew member culture and the nautical

02:49 theme and the handdrawn chalkboard

02:52 signs, but those are expressions of the

02:54 same underlying idea. Trader Joe's is a

02:57 store that communicates trust through

02:59 personality rather than through the kind

03:01 of formal quality signals that other

03:03 stores rely on. No slotting fees, no

03:06 national brand advertising, no

03:09 complicated tiered pricing, just a

03:11 smaller store with a curated selection

03:14 and a staff that seems genuinely happy

03:16 to be there, which is its own form of

03:18 reassurance. The consumer who shops at

03:20 Trader Joe's regularly has a specific

03:22 relationship with the store that goes

03:24 beyond transactional. They use the word

03:27 cult unironically. They follow fan

03:30 accounts dedicated to new product

03:32 arrivals. They mourn discontinued items

03:34 with a grief that is slightly

03:36 disproportionate but entirely sincere.

03:39 That emotional relationship is

03:41 commercially valuable in a way that is

03:42 almost impossible to replicate because

03:44 it cannot be manufactured. It has to be

03:47 earned over decades. Trader Joe's earned

03:50 it by making their customer feel seen.

03:52 The move they just made is the most

03:54 direct expression of that relationship

03:55 the company has ever made. And it is

03:58 going to cost them something real to

04:00 follow through on. What Trader Joe's

04:03 actually did. In 2025, Trader Joe's

04:06 announced a sweeping update to the

04:08 formulation standards for its private

04:10 label product line. Given that private

04:12 label is essentially the entire store,

04:15 this means they announced new standards

04:17 for almost everything they sell. The

04:19 update targets a specific set of

04:21 ingredients that have been present in

04:23 Trader Joe's products and in the

04:25 products of every other grocery store in

04:27 America without meaningful challenge for

04:28 decades. And the specific ingredients

04:31 they targeted reveal something

04:33 deliberate about the intention behind

04:34 the policy. The first category is

04:37 synthetic preservatives. Trader Joe's is

04:40 removing calcium propionate, potassium

04:42 sorbate, and sodium benzoate from their

04:44 product formulations. These are the

04:47 three most widely used synthetic

04:49 preservatives in packaged food. Calcium

04:52 propionate is the preservative found in

04:54 commercially produced bread that

04:56 peer-reviewed research has connected to

04:58 behavioral changes in children,

05:00 including irritability and sleep

05:01 disruption. Potassium sorbate is used

05:04 across baked goods, dairy products, and

05:06 beverages and has raised concerns in

05:09 independent research about immune system

05:11 effects at the cellular level. Sodium

05:13 benzoate when combined with ascorbic

05:15 acid in beverages forms benzene, a known

05:19 carcinogen. The combination is common.

05:22 The disclosure is not. Trader Joe's is

05:25 removing all three from their product

05:26 line. The second category is artificial

05:29 colors. Red 40, yellow five, yellow six.

05:34 The petroleum derived synthetic dyes

05:36 that the European Union has required

05:38 warning labels for since 2010 because

05:41 the research linked them to

05:42 hyperactivity in children. In the United

05:45 States, the FDA has reviewed the same

05:47 research and declined to act. Every

05:50 major food manufacturer in America has

05:52 continued using these dyes in products

05:54 sold to children without a warning

05:56 label. Trader Joe's is removing them.

05:59 The third category is something that

06:01 nobody expected a grocery store to

06:03 touch. Certain Trader Joe's products

06:05 have contained what the company now

06:07 classifies as nonfunctional additives.

06:10 Ingredients that were included not for

06:12 any nutritional purpose, not for any

06:14 safety purpose, but purely to achieve a

06:17 visual or textural effect that consumers

06:19 have been conditioned to expect and that

06:22 cheaper ingredients cannot produce

06:23 without a chemical assist.

06:25 Think of the specific brightness of a

06:27 color, the specific elasticity of a

06:30 texture, the specific uniformity of a

06:32 shape that signals quality while being

06:35 produced by a compound rather than by a

06:37 quality ingredient. Trader Joe's is

06:40 removing those additives and

06:41 reformulating the products to work

06:43 without them. That last category is the

06:46 most significant one. Removing a

06:48 preservative is meaningful. Removing a

06:50 dye is meaningful. Removing an

06:53 ingredient whose only function was to

06:54 make the product look or feel like

06:56 something it isn't is a different kind

06:58 of commitment entirely. It means some

07:01 Trader Joe's products are going to look

07:03 slightly different than what you've been

07:04 buying. The color might be less vivid.

07:07 The texture might be less uniform. And

07:10 the company looked at those trade-offs

07:11 and decided that was still the right

07:13 call, which is a sentence no major

07:15 grocery retailer has been willing to say

07:17 before. The private label label problem

07:19 nobody talks about. Here is the part of

07:22 this story that the press coverage has

07:24 largely missed. When Target reformulated

07:27 Good and Gather, they were reformulating

07:29 a store brand that operates within a

07:31 broader store where name brands continue

07:33 to sell under their own standards. When

07:36 Whole Foods tightened their supplier

07:37 requirements, they were tightening the

07:39 standards applied to independent brands

07:41 who sell through their platform. Trader

07:44 Joe's doesn't have that separation. When

07:46 Trader Joe's commits to removing calcium

07:48 proprianate from their bread, they are

07:51 not pressuring an outside supplier to

07:52 change their formulation. They are the

07:55 supplier. The accountability for what

07:57 goes into that product runs straight to

07:59 Trader Joe's and nobody else. That makes

08:02 this move either more meaningful or more

08:04 complicated depending on what you know

08:06 about how Trader Joe's actually sources

08:08 its products. Trader Joe's private label

08:11 products are manufactured by third-party

08:13 producers under contract. Many of these

08:16 producers are the same manufacturers

08:18 producing name brand products for other

08:20 retailers under different labels. The

08:23 granola that appears in a Trader Joe's

08:25 bag may come from the same facility as a

08:27 granola that appears under a well-known

08:29 national brand. The formulation is

08:31 different because Trader Joe's controls

08:33 the recipe, but the factory, the

08:35 equipment, and the supply chain for the

08:37 raw ingredients can overlap

08:39 significantly. This is the private label

08:42 supply chain reality that Trader Joe's,

08:44 like every retailer running this model,

08:46 has never fully disclosed. The mystique

08:49 of the Trader Joe's product, the sense

08:51 that it was made by someone different

08:53 using something better, has always been

08:55 partly a product of strategic ambiguity

08:57 about where things actually come from.

09:00 The new formulation standards do not

09:02 resolve that ambiguity. They do not

09:04 require Trader Joe's to disclose which

09:06 manufacturer produces which product or

09:09 what other products those manufacturers

09:11 are producing for other labels. What

09:13 they require is that whatever is in the

09:15 Trader Joe's version of the product

09:17 meets the new ingredient standard. The

09:19 sourcing can remain opaque. The

09:22 formulation has to be transparent. That

09:24 is progress. It is partial progress. And

09:27 understanding the difference between

09:29 those two things is the most important

09:30 thing you can take from this chapter.

09:33 Trader Joe's committed to what is in the

09:34 product. They have not committed to who

09:36 makes it or where the ingredients come

09:38 from. For a store whose entire identity

09:41 is built on trust, that gap is worth

09:43 watching carefully as the policy rolls

09:46 out. The customer who buys Trader Joe's

09:48 bread because they trust Trader Joe's

09:50 deserves to know not just that calcium

09:52 propriionate has been removed, but what

09:55 grain went into the flour and where that

09:57 grain was grown and whether it was

09:59 tested for glyphosate before it was mil.

10:01 That level of transparency is not part

10:03 of this policy. It may never be, but it

10:06 is the logical next question. And a

10:08 company that just answered one hard

10:10 question is going to be asked the next

10:12 one. Why every other grocery store

10:15 refused to do this? Trader Joe's did not

10:18 do this because they are more virtuous

10:20 than other grocery stores. They did it

10:22 because their specific model made it

10:24 cheaper to do this than to be caught not

10:26 doing it. That sounds cynical. It is

10:28 also accurate. And understanding the

10:31 economics is the only way to understand

10:33 why this store moved when every other

10:35 store with a similar customer

10:36 demographic chose to stay still. The

10:39 private label model eliminates the

10:41 slotting fee relationship. At Kroger, a

10:44 food manufacturer pays for shelf space.

10:47 That payment creates a financial

10:49 relationship that makes demanding

10:50 ingredient changes from that

10:52 manufacturer commercially complicated.

10:55 The fee payer is also a client. Kroger's

10:58 leverage over the ingredient choices of

10:59 their name brand suppliers is limited by

11:02 the revenue those suppliers represent.

11:05 Trader Joe's doesn't collect slotting

11:06 fees. They don't have name brand

11:08 suppliers in the traditional sense.

11:11 Every product on their shelf is under

11:13 their control. When they decide to

11:15 remove calcium propionate from their

11:17 bread formulation, they call their

11:19 contract manufacturer and change the

11:21 recipe. There is no third party to

11:23 negotiate with. There is no slotting fee

11:26 to lose. The decision lives entirely

11:28 within Trader Joe's authority. That

11:31 structural simplicity makes ingredient

11:33 decisions faster and cheaper for Trader

11:35 Joe's than for any other major retailer

11:37 in America. The cost of reformulation is

11:39 real, but it doesn't come with the

11:41 additional cost of renegotiating

11:43 supplier contracts across a product

11:45 category. Kroger's version of this

11:47 change would require reformulating their

11:50 store brand line and simultaneously

11:52 managing the commercial relationships

11:54 with every name brand supplier in the

11:56 same category. The complexity is

11:59 exponentially higher. The incentive to

12:01 accept that complexity is

12:03 correspondingly lower. Walmart's great

12:06 value line faces the same problem with

12:08 the additional constraint of Walmart's

12:10 margin structure. Great value exists to

12:13 deliver the lowest possible price on a

12:15 recognizable product. Reformulating

12:18 without synthetic preservatives

12:20 increases the cost of production and

12:22 shortens the shelf life of the product.

12:24 Both outcomes work against the great

12:26 value mandate. The math doesn't work at

12:29 Walmart's price floor.

12:32 Whole Foods moved on natural flavor

12:34 disclosure and seed oil transparency.

12:36 Their move required pressuring

12:38 independent brands, which took

12:40 significant institutional leverage. The

12:43 Whole Foods customer is willing to pay

12:45 for the clean label signal in a way that

12:47 supports the premium required to fund

12:49 reformulation.

12:51 The Trader Joe's move required Trader

12:53 Joe's to reformulate their own products,

12:56 which is faster but still expensive. And

12:59 the Trader Joe's customer has

13:00 historically expected value alongside

13:03 quality.

13:04 Raising prices to fund reformulation is

13:06 a more complicated sell at Trader Joe's

13:09 than at Whole Foods. The reason Trader

13:11 Joe's moved is that their customer

13:13 caught up to their pricing expectation.

13:16 The Trader Joe's shopper of 2025 is more

13:19 ingredient literate than the Trader

13:21 Joe's shopper of 2005.

13:23 The store's reputation is built on

13:25 trust, and maintaining that trust in an

13:28 era where ingredient scrutiny has become

13:30 mainstream is worth more to the Trader

13:32 Joe's brand than the cost savings from

13:34 keeping cheaper additives in the

13:36 formulation. They did the math. The math

13:39 said move

13:42 the ingredient problem at the center of

13:44 this.

13:45 Let's talk specifically about what

13:47 calcium propionate, potassium sorbate,

13:50 and sodium benzoate are, why they

13:52 survive this long in food marketed as

13:54 wholesome, and what the research

13:56 actually shows about each one. Start

13:59 with calcium propionate because it is in

14:01 more products than most people realize.

14:03 It is the primary preservative used in

14:05 commercially produced bread in the

14:07 United States. It is effective,

14:09 inexpensive, and has been in use since

14:11 the 1950s.

14:13 For most of that period, the assumption

14:15 was that a preservative used at low

14:17 concentrations in a product as

14:19 ubiquitous as bread must have been

14:21 thoroughly evaluated for safety. It was

14:24 not. The peer-reviewed literature on

14:27 calcium propionate began raising

14:29 specific concerns about behavioral

14:31 effects in the early 2000s. A study

14:34 published in the Journal of Pediatrics

14:35 and Child Health found that children

14:37 consuming calcium propionate showed

14:40 measurable increases in irritability,

14:42 restlessness, and sleep disturbance. The

14:46 findings were replicated in subsequent

14:47 research. The FDA reviewed the

14:50 literature and maintained the generally

14:52 recognized as safe classification.

14:54 The research continued accumulating. The

14:57 regulatory status did not change.

15:00 Calcium propionate is still in the bread

15:02 at every major grocery store in America

15:04 that isn't Trader Joe's. It is in the

15:07 sandwich bread, the hot dog buns, the

15:10 dinner rolls. It is in the snack

15:12 crackers. It is in the packaged baked

15:14 goods. It has been in those products

15:16 every day for the families who have been

15:18 buying commercially produced bread for

15:20 their children without any label

15:22 indication that behavioral research

15:24 existed on the compound they were

15:26 consuming.

15:27 Potassium sorbate is used in a broader

15:30 range of products, dairy items,

15:32 beverages, baked goods, processed meats.

15:36 It functions as a mold and yeast

15:38 inhibitor and is highly effective at

15:40 what it does. In vitro research, which

15:42 means research conducted on cells

15:44 outside the body, has raised concerns

15:47 about its mutagenic effects at the

15:49 cellular level. The FDA classification

15:52 is safe. The in vitro findings have not

15:56 been replicated in clinical human

15:58 studies at the concentrations present in

16:00 food. The concern exists in the

16:03 research. The regulatory response does

16:06 not. Sodium benzoate is the most

16:09 chemically complicated of the three. On

16:12 its own at the concentrations used in

16:14 food, sodium benzoate has not been

16:17 demonstrated to be harmful in human

16:19 studies. The problem is the reaction.

16:22 When sodium benzoate combines with

16:24 ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C, in an

16:28 acidic environment, the two compounds

16:30 react to form benzene. Benzene is

16:34 classified as a carcinogen by every

16:36 major health regulatory body in the

16:38 world. It is associated with leukemia

16:41 and other blood cancers at levels of

16:44 chronic exposure.

16:45 Sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid appear

16:48 together in a wide range of beverages

16:51 from fruit drinks to carbonated sodas to

16:54 certain functional beverages because

16:56 ascorbic acid is commonly used as a

16:58 preservative and flavor enhancer in

17:00 acidic drinks and sodium benzoate is

17:04 used to prevent microbial growth in

17:06 those same products. The benzene

17:08 formation reaction has been known since

17:10 the 1990s. The FDA has monitored benzene

17:14 levels in beverages intermittently. They

17:17 have not required manufacturers to stop

17:19 using the combination.

17:22 Trader Joe's removing sodium benzoate

17:24 from its product formulations does not

17:26 solve this problem at an industry level.

17:29 It removes the problem from the specific

17:31 products under their control, which is

17:34 the only thing they have the authority

17:35 to do. That is how ingredient reform

17:38 works when regulators won't move. one

17:42 product at a time, one company at a time

17:45 until the cumulative pressure of enough

17:48 individual decisions changes what the

17:50 industry considers a baseline

17:53 expectation.

17:55 What Trader Joe's still gets wrong.

17:58 Let's not turn this into a fan letter

18:01 because there are specific things Trader

18:03 Joe's did not do and those things matter

18:05 as much as what they did. The sourcing

18:08 opacity problem is the most significant

18:10 one and the one the company has the most

18:13 control over. Trader Joe's can tell you

18:16 what is not in their products. Now, they

18:19 cannot tell you where those products

18:21 come from, who makes them, or what

18:23 standards govern the supply chain

18:25 upstream of the finished product. The

18:28 wheat in the reformulated bread is not

18:31 traced to a specific farm. The oils in

18:34 the reformulated crackers do not carry a

18:37 disclosed extraction method. The produce

18:40 in the refrigerated section is not

18:42 always sourced transparently enough to

18:45 verify the pesticide practices of the

18:47 growers.

18:49 Ingredient reform inside the finished

18:51 product is meaningful. Ingredient reform

18:54 that doesn't extend to the raw materials

18:56 going into that product is incomplete.

18:59 The glyphosate contamination that

19:01 independent testing has found in organic

19:04 wheat products exists at the raw

19:06 material level before any manufacturer

19:09 adds a single preservative.

19:12 Trader Joe's new policy does not address

19:14 what arrives at the manufacturing

19:16 facility. It only addresses what leaves

19:19 it.

19:21 The second gap is the wine and beverage

19:23 program. Trader Joe's wines, including

19:26 the famous two buck chuck, which hasn't

19:29 actually been $2 since roughly 2005, but

19:32 we'll let that slide, are a massive part

19:35 of the store's identity and revenue. And

19:38 they have never been subject to the same

19:40 ingredient scrutiny as their food

19:42 products. Not once, not in any way that

19:46 the company has made public.

19:48 Commercial wine production involves a

19:50 range of additives and processing aids

19:53 that are not required to appear on

19:55 labels because alcohol labeling

19:57 regulations in the United States are

19:59 governed by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax

20:02 and Trade Bureau rather than the FDA.

20:05 And the TTB has historically required

20:08 significantly less ingredient disclosure

20:10 than the FDA. Trader Joe's wine program

20:13 is large, popular, and almost entirely

20:16 opaque from an ingredient perspective.

20:18 The new formulation standards that apply

20:20 to their food line do not apply to their

20:22 beverage alcohol line. For a customer

20:24 who shops at Trader Joe's specifically

20:26 because they trust the ingredient

20:27 standards, that gap is worth knowing

20:29 about. The third gap is the timeline

20:32 ambiguity. Trader Joe's has not

20:35 published a product byproduct transition

20:37 schedule. The announcement of the new

20:39 standards does not mean every product

20:41 currently on the shelf already meets

20:43 those standards. Some products are

20:45 already compliant. Some are in

20:47 reformulation. Some have not yet had

20:49 their transition date set. A Trader

20:51 Joe's shopper who assumes the new policy

20:53 means every product is already clean is

20:56 making an assumption the company has not

20:58 authorized them to make. Trader Joe's

21:00 moved. They moved meaningfully in a

21:03 direction the evidence has been pointing

21:04 toward for 20 years. The gap between the

21:07 move they made and the full transparency

21:09 their customers deserve is real. It is

21:12 specific and it is worth tracking every

21:14 time you walk into one of their stores

21:16 going forward. What this means for how

21:18 you shop right now. Here's the part that

21:21 actually changes something in your week.

21:23 Because knowing the policy is

21:24 interesting. Knowing what to do with it

21:26 when you're standing in the aisle is

21:28 what matters. The first thing to do is

21:30 stop assuming the Trader Joe's label is

21:32 a blanket guarantee. It never was. and

21:35 the new policy doesn't make it one. What

21:37 the policy does is raise the floor for

21:39 what the label means. That floor is

21:41 higher than it was. It is not as high as

21:44 the company's marketing language

21:45 sometimes implies. Read the ingredient

21:48 list. That instruction does not change

21:50 just because the store changed its

21:52 standard. The second thing to do is pay

21:54 specific attention to the preservative

21:56 question across every store you shop at.

21:59 Calcium propionate, potassium sorbate,

22:02 and sodium benzoate are the three

22:04 compounds Trader Joe's is removing.

22:06 Those compounds are still in products at

22:08 Kroger, Albertson's, Walmart, Target

22:11 outside the Good and Gather line, and

22:13 every other major retailer in the

22:15 country. The research on calcium

22:17 propionate and behavioral effects in

22:19 children that Trader Joe's implicitly

22:21 acknowledged by removing it from their

22:22 products exists regardless of which

22:25 store you're standing in. The label on

22:26 the back of any bread product will tell

22:28 you whether it's there. The third thing

22:30 to do is look for what changed the next

22:32 time you buy a Trader Joe's product

22:34 you've been buying for a while. If a

22:36 bread you've been buying for years no

22:38 longer lists calcium propionate, the

22:40 reformulation happened. If the

22:42 ingredient list is shorter than you

22:44 remember, check what was removed. The

22:46 policy change is visible in the product

22:48 if you're paying attention. And paying

22:50 attention is the only quality control

22:52 you have. The fourth thing to do is

22:55 apply the principle elsewhere. Trader

22:57 Joe's removing synthetic preservatives

22:59 from their products doesn't mean other

23:01 brands have moved. It means the question

23:03 is now clearly worth asking. A brand

23:06 that still uses calcium propionate in a

23:08 product marketed for children is now

23:10 competing against a store that removed

23:12 it. That competitive pressure is new.

23:15 The question you ask at the shelf, why

23:17 does this product still have this

23:19 compound when Trader Joe's removed it

23:20 from theirs? is a question every

23:23 manufacturer should now have to answer.

23:25 Buy fewer ingredients from wherever you

23:27 shop. That principle has run through

23:29 everything we've covered on this

23:30 channel. No reformulation announcement

23:33 changes it. What the Trader Joe's

23:34 announcement does is validate it. The

23:37 store with the most loyal customer base

23:38 in American grocery retail just told

23:41 their customer that fewer ingredients is

23:43 the right direction. They spent money to

23:46 say that. Take them up on it. Here's the

23:48 thing about what Trader Joe's just did

23:50 that nobody in the industry wants to say

23:52 out loud. Trader Joe's is not a premium

23:55 store. It does not charge Whole Foods

23:57 prices. It does not carry the

23:59 demographic that Whole Foods carries.

24:02 Its stores are smaller. Its selection is

24:05 narrower and its brand identity is built

24:08 on approachability rather than

24:10 aspiration.

24:12 When Whole Foods raises a standard, the

24:15 industry can look at the price point and

24:16 the shopper and say, "That's a niche

24:19 move for a niche customer." And keep

24:22 doing what they're doing. That

24:24 explanation is not available for Trader

24:26 Joe's. The Trader Joe's customer is a

24:29 mainstream customer paying mainstream

24:32 prices who now has access to a store

24:34 that is committed to removing compounds

24:37 that every other mainstream grocery

24:39 store is still selling without comment.

24:42 That comparison is going to become a

24:45 conversation in pediatrician offices, in

24:49 school pickup lines, in the comment

24:51 sections of every food account that

24:53 covers this story. The store nobody

24:56 expected to move first just moved. And

24:59 every other store that hasn't is now

25:02 being asked to explain why. You know the

25:05 answer. You know what's in the products

25:07 they haven't touched yet. You know what

25:10 to look for when you flip the package

25:12 over. The industry's ability to keep you

25:15 from asking the question just got

25:17 harder.