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That’s a lot of Everything but the Bagel seasoning.
The busiest Trader Joe’s store in the world sprawls across three levels and features triple the number of employees of the average location to handle never-ending lines that sometimes extend to the street.
And if you guessed that this stuffed-to-the-rafters store is located somewhere in NYC, you’d be correct.
Despite only serving the city that never sleeps since 2006 — that’s the year the first branch of the Southern California institution opened to great fanfare at 142 E. 14th St., just off Union Square — the quirky, tiki-themed alternative to traditional grocery shopping has been a smash hit with New Yorkers.
And even though you might be convinced that your neighborhood branch on a Sunday afternoon is by far the most crowded, nowhere in the Big Apple manages to outdo the scene at 72nd and Broadway on the Upper West Side, according to reports.
The oft-oversubscribed store at 2073 Broadway features four escalators (including for carts, to make moving between floors easier), two elevators and three times the registers of your average TJ’s location.
Being a crew member at the neighborhood fave means being an expert in crowd management and navigation, to keep things from descending into chaos. Think Zabar’s, just up the street, but with more space and lines that are harder to cut.
And because you’ll spend most of your visit underground, don’t count on cell reception for off-the-cuff price comparisons, or for incoming last-minute requests from home — customers report finding themselves in a no-bar situation on a regular basis.
In a ranking of every Manhattan Trader Joe’s location compiled by the Washington Square News, the Grey’s Papaya-adjacent Cacio E Pepe Puff palace was ranked near the bottom.
Reviewers called it “bizarre,” saying it “sprawls like a maze” and that the flow “just feels wrong.”
“The outing made us understand the value of urban planning. After shopping here, you’ll want to take a moment to relax in nearby Central Park,” critics Joey Hung and Sabrina Choudhary wrote in 2021.
Trader Joe’s launched in the late 1960’s in Pasadena, Calif., a short drive from Downtown Los Angeles.
The company was purchased by Aldi founder Theo Albrecht in 1979 and is still owned by his descendants. There are currently more than 600 stores from coast to coast.
The average Trader Joe’s ranges between 10,000 and 15,000 square feet. The 72nd and Broadway branch is thoroughly average in at least one way, with just 12,500 square feet of space.
The smallest location is found on Boylston Street in Boston — a claustrophobic 5,200 square feet.
Trader Joe’s is known for adapting to unusual locations — from a decommissioned movie theater in Houston to a former bank branch in Brooklyn’s tony Cobble Hill neighborhood.
