Mysterious Newcomers:West 14th Street Gets ReadyFor A New Trader...John's?

Like anyone else, we here at The Shophound have our pet peeves. Sometimes they are remedied (Marc Jacobs' teeny tiny men's store gets moved to a larger location, for example), and sometimes they are not.
One of the tremendous annoyances we will admit to continuing to put up with are the truly ridiculous checkout lines that form at Trader Joe's anytime after mid-morning. Should we boycott in protest? Well, of course, but then, they have all kinds of stuff we want and need, and it's cheap. Of course, the objective would be to get Trader Joe's to open more stores in Manhattan, and not shopping there would seem to be counterproductive in this case.
Unfortunately, TJ's seems to be dragging its feet in regards to new Manhattan stores. We have heard rumors about an upcoming West 72^nd Street location, but that would still be years away.
Apparently, someone else has lost patience as well, and is opening some sort of knockoff just a couple of blocks across town in the space once occupied by a particularly unloved branch of Gristede's. It appears that Trader John's is a food market, and judging from the wood paneling, baskets and decorative wagon wheels in our sneaky photos, it is going for a similar ersatz country store aesthetic. Will they have the same sort of products? Who knows, but it looks like they are already stocking the shelves, so we should find out exactly what it is in a couple of weeks.
Will this be a worthy, if blatantly derivative alternative, or is this new store simply trying to take advantage of a familiar-sounding name? If so, should we be on the lookout for upcoming branches of Bloomingbird's? Or how about Black's Fifth Avenue? Oh we could go on with this for hours.

Comments

[cathy]

Who owns Trader John's??

[Stephen B]

Trader John's is owned by Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis

[Cheap Handbags]

why?