Holladay • Utah’s newest Trader Joe’s opened on Halloween, and shoppers found it without the fanfare or publicity the grocery chain usually mounts.
The company posted on its website Friday that the new store in Holladay, at 1895 E. Rodeo Walk Drive, was opening the same day. A crew member Sunday confirmed there was no ceremony when the store opened, and business was fairly calm Friday because of the holiday.
Compare that to a week earlier, at the opening of the new Trader Joe’s store in Riverdale, where an estimated 1,200 people were lined up waiting to enter. The opening in the Weber County city began with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that featured city officials and a high school marching band.
Business in the Holladay store picked up Saturday, the crew member said. During a Sunday morning visit, the store was fairly busy, with dozens of shoppers pushing their carts down the aisles.
The store is part of Holladay Hills, a retail-and-residential development on the former site of the Cottonwood Mall. It is located below a Kiln coworking space. Both are in a building that once housed a Macy’s department store.
The Cottonwood Mall, the first mall ever built in Utah, was constructed in 1962 and closed in 2008. Its redevelopment has been a source of controversy, most notably when Holladay voters turned down an ambitious mixed-use proposal in 2018.
The Holladay store is the seventh Trader Joe’s in Utah. The grocery chain also has locations in Cottonwood Heights, Draper, Orem, the new one in Riverdale, and two in Salt Lake City — on 400 South and in Sugar House. The company and city officials in Herriman announced in mid-October that an eighth Utah location would open there, but no opening date has been set.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
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Anticipation for a new Trader Joe’s often exceeds the reaction generated when other grocery stores open. The false rumor last month that the company was going to open a store in Logan produced a brief flurry of anticipation, before it was learned that someone had put up a fake “coming soon” banner on a building as a prank.
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