Why is there no Trader Joe’s near Hilton Head? What company says about getting one
Every few months on Facebook or Nextdoor, a thread pops up with a similar question — when is Hilton Head Island getting a Trader Joe’s?
The posts tend to elicit the same reaction every time: Someone posts a link to the Trader Joe’s store request form, someone else is certain Trader Joe’s is already coming and at least one person says something like “they’re never coming here. Stop trying.”
But the retailer’s presence is conspicuously absent in a growing area where many transplants moved from places with their own neighborhood Trader Joe’s. Rumors that the grocer would open an Okatie Crossing store blew up on social media earlier this year; those rumors turned out to be false, The Island Packet reported at the time.
Lee Lucier, COO at the Richardson Group that leases Hilton Head’s Coligny Plaza, said Trader Joe’s is probably the No. 1 name he hears from people who live on the island. Lucier said he’s never spoken to Trader Joe’s officials, and since the island has a year-round population of less than 40,000 people, he thinks the odds of them coming here are basically zero.
“I know they have a population size minimum. A lot of companies do,” Lucier said.
Trader Joe’s has no new stores coming soon to South Carolina, said Nakia Rohde, public relations manager for the company. However, the retailer has been in a “state of continuous growth” since it launched in 1967.
“Some years we grow more than others, and our goal is always to bring delicious products at great values to as many people and neighborhoods as we can. The best way to do that is to open more stores,” Rohde said via email.
To understand how Trader Joe’s might view the Hilton Head area, here’s some insight into how the retailer selects new markets.
What is Trader Joe’s?
Trader Joe’s is a California-based specialty grocery store chain known for private-label products. Foods like frozen mandarin orange chicken, peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets and cookie butter have developed cult followings.
Food may be the main draw, but Trader Joe’s is more than vegan tikka masala and chili lime chips. The stores sell greeting cards, flower bouquets and holiday wreaths, advent calendars, personal care products and more. It even publishes its own newsletter, the Fearless Flyer, which customers grab at the checkout counter.
The Trader Joe’s mystique is only enhanced by its strictly brick-and-mortar approach to retailing. You can’t buy Trader Joe’s products online, or have them delivered via Instacart. It’s impossible to get stuff from Trader Joe’s unless you or someone you know is physically present inside a Trader Joe’s.
That can be tough for Lowcountry residents, because the closest Trader Joe’s stores are more than 100 miles away in Mt. Pleasant.
How does Trader Joe’s pick a community?
On an October 2024 episode of the company’s “Inside Trader Joe’s” podcast, vice president of culture and innovation Matt Sloan addressed the question “what can I do to get a Trader Joe’s in my area?”
First, Trader Joe’s looks for densely populated areas, Sloan said. That could mean a brand-new market, or a new location in a city where the company already operates.
At the time of the podcast, the company was looking at 1,000 potential sites — but most of them won’t actually become stores, Sloan said. The retailer is interested in sites with easy access from the road and adequate parking.
Stores are typically no more than 15,000 square feet, according to estimates from several news reports, making them much smaller than supermarkets like Publix, which are typically around 50,000 square feet.
“We’re not interested in growth by buying another chain and putting a different sign on the building,” Sloan said. “It wouldn’t feel like a neighborhood Trader Joe’s.”
The company aims to open between 20 and 25 stores per year, vice president of real estate and construction Donnie Martin said in a 2022 podcast episode called “How to make a Trader Joe’s, part one.”
In South Carolina, the chain has six stores — one in Myrtle Beach, two in Mt. Pleasant, one in Greenville and two in Columbia.
Stores in Miller Place, New York; New Orleans; McKinney, Texas; and Hamden, Connecticut, are scheduled to open soon.
What can Hilton Head do?
The Hilton Head area is probably in a better position than ever to get its first Trader Joe’s.
The island’s year-round population has plateaued over the past decade , sitting around 38,000 in 2024, compared to about 37,000 in 2010. But Bluffton’s population has exploded, from 12,530 in 2010 to an estimated 36,146 last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Nearby Jasper County is the fastest-growing in the country in terms of housing units, and its population grew from 24,777 in 2010 to 35,618 last year.
Still, those population numbers might be too low to get the retailer’s attention. Before looking at Hilton Head, Trader Joe’s would probably consider nearby Savannah, Georgia, home to about 147,000 people, comparable to Columbia’s 144,788.
Trader Joe’s is used to getting requests for stores.
“It’s the greatest problem in the world to have ... people so excited about the prospect of one of our stores coming to their neighborhood that they start a social media campaign, or they start a letter writing campaign,” Tara Miller, vice president of marketing at Trader Joe’s, said on the October 2024 podcast.
But as cool as they are to see, they don’t really have an impact on where Trader Joe’s chooses to put stores, Sloan said.
“While we love the energy and enthusiasm often expressed in any of those various social media campaigns, they really — from the hate to break it to you department of maybe not what you were hoping to hear news — they really don’t have much of any impact on what we end up deciding,” he said.