In 1958, Joe Coulombe took over a small chain of convenience stores in the Los Angeles area called Pronto Markets. As Trader Joe's Vice President of Marketing Product Matt Sloan put it in a ...

Trader Joe's started as Pronto Markets under the ownership of Joe Coulombe (yes, there really was a "Trader Joe"), a local chain of less than a dozen California locations more akin to a ...

the late Joe Coulombe. The chain was sold in 1979 to Theo Albrecht, a German entrepreneur who co-founded the ALDI grocery chain in Essen, Germany in 1946 with his brother Karl. The two brothers ...

Trader Joe's was born in 1958 as a small chain of Southern California convenience stores opened by a drugstore executive named Joe Coulombe. In 1967 he changed the stores' name from Pronto Markets ...