‘Being wanted does matter to us.’ Could Lexington push to woo Trader Joe’s to town pay off?
Could there be a Trader Joe’s in Lexington? Thousands of people who have signed a petition circulated by the town of Lexington are hoping so.
The town said in a March 21 Facebook post that Trader Joe’s, the trendy grocer that has locations nationwide, had “shown interest in putting a store in the town of Lexington.” The town then asked residents to sign an online petition to “let them know we are the perfect location for their next store.”
The Facebook overture drew a big reaction, with more than 500 comments and nearly 550 shares as of Monday morning. But the petition itself has garnered an even bigger response. As of 10:40 a.m. Monday, nearly 9,100 people had signed the online document.
There currently are just more than 600 Trader Joe’s grocery stores in the U.S., per data website ScrapeHero. The only Trader Joe’s currently located in the Midlands is at 4516 Forest Drive in Forest Acres near Columbia. There are three other locations in the state — two in Mt. Pleasant, one in Greenville.
“I frequently drive 35 minutes to shop at the Columbia Trader Joe’s,” one commenter noted on the Lexington Trader Joe’s petition. “Having a store in Lexington [would] allow me to spend my money close to home.”
Meanwhile, one of the hundreds of commenters on the town of Lexington’s Facebook post on the matter opined that the demographics of the Lexington area “more than warrant” a Trader Joe’s location.
“Why should we have to drive to the other side of town, to spend money that we would actually spend in our own town?” that Facebook commenter wondered.
A spokesperson for Trader Joe’s said the company examines potential locations across the U.S.
“We are actively looking at hundreds of neighborhoods across the country as we hope to open more new neighborhood stores each year,” Trader Joe’s public relations manager Nakia Rohde said in an email. “We do not have a location identified in Lexington, but being wanted does matter to us.”
The first Trader Joe’s was opened in Pasadena, California in 1967. Founder Joe Coulombe started the chain at the time, according to a story from CNN, “to appeal to the small but growing number of well-educated, well-traveled consumers that mainstream supermarkets were ignoring.”
The company says on its website that its buyers “travel the world searching for products we think are exceptional and will find a following among our customers.”
The town of Lexington’s population has been on a steady rise across the last three decades. The town had just 4,100 residents in 1990, according to census data. But as of 2023, the population had swelled to nearly 25,000. Meanwhile, Lexington County has seen its population similarly soar, going from 167,000 in 1990 to nearly 310,000 in 2023.
This story was originally published March 24, 2025 at 11:33 AM.
