LOS ANGELES-John V. Shields Jr., a former CEO of Trader Joe’s who made the quintessentially California grocery chain a national powerhouse by breaking out of the Golden State and building stores throughout the U.S., has died. He was 82.
Shields, who lived in Thousand Oaks, died Oct. 31 after a lengthy illness, his family announced.
During Shields’ tenure, from 1988 to 2001, sales surged from $132 million annually to more than $2 billion. Despite questions about whether frostbitten customers would cotton to TJ’s laid-back style and genial, aloha shirt-clad “crews,” Shields charted a course relentlessly eastward and expanded the chain from 27 stores to 174.
“He was nervous about whether they would be able to transfer the culture of Southern California to the East Coast,” said Mark Mallinger, professor emeritus of applied behavioral science at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management.
“They had to maintain the image of being a neighborhood specialty grocery store in a national market,” Mallinger said. That meant chatting up customers – but not so much that they’d fail to return for another jar of mango chutney to top off their curried veggie burgers. To establish company culture in foreign surroundings, Shields sent effervescent SoCal clerks into the unknown.