Trader Joe’s is off to the new-store races this September, having opened a location in Halfmoon, N.Y. on Sept. 8, a store in Morrisville, N.C., on Sept. 10, and a new wine shop in Colorado Springs, Colo., a state where wine and spirits must be sold separately from groceries.
Formerly an Earth Fare, the 10,600-square-foot Morrisville store at 951 Morrisville Parkway is Trader Joe’s 11th location in North Carolina. Grocery competition in the area is strong and growing. It includes multiple Aldi and Food Lion stores as well as Walmart and Wegmans, the last of which opened in neighboring West Cary last year.
Wegmans also has been aggressive about its North Carolina expansion. While it doesn’t open new stores with the nimbleness or frequency of smaller-format Trader Joe’s and Aldi, it opened its first store in the state in Raleigh in 2019. That move was followed by the West Cary location in 2020 and stores in Chapel Hill and Wake Forest earlier this year. But the Rochester, N.Y.-based grocer’s four North Carolina stores are far fewer than Aldi’s more than 70 stores in the state.
Source: Winsight Grocery Business