This Major Southern City Is Getting Its First-Ever Trader Joe’s

Would you like some Everything But the Bagel Seasoning with your beignets?

Trader Joe’s is opening its first New Orleans store on Thursday, Aug. 14. This is the first-ever location in The Big Easy and the third in Louisiana.

The new location has been two years in the making and was first announced by The Times-Picayune back in June 2023.

According to the grocery chain’s announcement, the store is located at 2501 Tulane Avenue in the Tulane-Gravier neighborhood. For some perspective, it is a 12-minute drive from Tulane University, an 11-minute drive from Café Du Monde and an 8-minute drive from Bourbon Street.

Last month, the grocery store announced that it would be opening 30 new locations in 18 states, including the Tulane Avenue store and another New Orleans location on Napoleon Avenue. The second Nola store does not have an exact opening date yet but is “coming soon,” per the chain’s website.

Representatives at Trader Joe’s explained how the company decides where to open up new locations in a 2024 episode of the Inside Trader Joe’s podcast. 

Hosts Tara Miller and Matt Sloan detailed how population density and parking space are two major factors. Unfortunately for fans, petitions don’t help Trader Joe’s decision. 

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“People get 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,” said Miller. Sloan then broke the bad news: “While we love the energy and enthusiasm often expressed in any of those various social media campaigns…they really don’t have much, if any, impact on what we end up deciding.”

Ultimately, it boils down to “access and ease of getting into and out of, and the flow of traffic patterns,” said Sloan.