Trader Joe’s said Monday that Dan Bane, its CEO for 22 years, will retire in July.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane will retire in July, the grocery store chain said on Monday.
Bane has worked at Trader Joe’s for a quarter-century, the company said.
The company started selling bananas for 19 cents each after a conversation Bane had with a shopper.
The man behind Trader Joe‘s 19-cent bananas is leaving the grocer.
Dan Bane, who has worked at Trader Joe’s for 25 years, will retire on July 2, the company said Monday.
“I take great pride that together we have made Trader Joe’s the best grocery store in America,” Bane said, according to Trader Joe’s. “Thanks to all!”
With Bane’s retirement will come the promotion of Bryan Palbaum to Chairman and CEO and Jon Basalone to Vice CEO, Trader Joe’s said.
In his quarter-century there, Bane left his mark on the California-based grocery chain. He made the call, for example, to sell Trader Joe’s bananas individually for 19 cents each after seeing an elderly customer balk at a package of the fruit priced by the pound, he told a podcast produced by the company in 2018.
“I said, ‘Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, I saw you looking at the bananas but you didn’t, you didn’t put anything in your cart,” he recounted on the podcast. “And she says to me, ‘Sonny … I may not live to that fourth banana.'” Bane said that he made the decision to sell bananas singly the next day.
Under Bane, Trader Joe’s stuck to a leaner operating strategy than most other US grocery stores. Its supermarkets are smaller than those owned by Kroger and Albertsons, for instance, and carry mainly the company’s own products, from Oreo-like sandwich cookies called “Joe-Joe’s” to a Charles Shaw-branded wine known as the “two buck chuck.” (Inflation has pushed the price of the wine higher since its introduction, with bottles for sale at a Florida store for $4.49 last year, for example.)
“We have a simple and focused format: We don’t have secretaries because everyone should be supporting the company, not someone else,” Bane said in 2007 at an event hosted by the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, where he received a Bachelor’s degree.
California-based Trader Joe’s is owned by the same family who owns Aldi Nord, a German chain of discount grocery stores. Aldi stores in the US are run by Aldi Süd, another German grocery chain. The two Aldi’s were run as one company until the 1960s, when the brothers who owned the business decided to split it over a disagreement about selling cigarettes.
Trader Joe’s operates 543 stores in 42 states and Washington, DC, the company said on Monday.