They’re seeing double.
A new Trader Joe’s opened in Los Angeles directly across the street from one of the grocery giant’s oldest stores, but the company says it will keep both operating in spite of the confounding redundancy that left many customers scratching their heads.
The veteran Sherman Oaks store and its successor, cheekily dubbed “Sherman Oaks too” on the Trader Joe’s website, dominate the corners of Riverside Drive just a couple of minutes off the bustling US Highway 101 in the San Fernando Valley.
The original store opened in 1973, just six years after Trader Joe’s was founded at the flagship Pasadena location. It’s quaint with a teeny parking lot compared to its newer sibling right across the street, which opened earlier this month.
Conversely, the new, flashy TJ’s sprawling on the corner across the street took over a mixed-use residential building with ever-reliable customers practically built into the store.
Still, the stores are just a minute apart — or less for daring jaywalkers.
“We’ve had a great relationship with our customers in Sherman Oaks for 52 years, and we plan to keep both stores open. Both stores offer the same great products and delightful customer experience, but each has a different layout and parking lot,” Trader Joe’s spokesperson Nakia Rohde wrote in an email to SFGATE.
Even with much of the same unique options Trader Joe’s is known for, the new location boasts some extra assets that could blow the beloved veteran outpost out of the water.
“Sherman Oaks too” includes all the modern-day makings of any bougie market, complete with a mural perfect for social media, sprawling underground parking to compensate for the elder store’s minimart lot and larger sections filling every available part of the sprawling location.
And, to better accommodate shopping cart traffic, it even has wider aisles and higher ceilings, SFGATE reported in their walkthrough of the second location.
The “Sherman Oaks too” is one of 12 stores Trader Joe’s is opening across the country this year, including a second location on Staten Island.
“Since Trader Joe’s began in 1967, we have been in growth mode. Some years, we grow more than others, and our goal is always to bring delicious products at great values to as many people as we can. The best way to do that is to open more stores,” Rohde wrote.
Unlike in Los Angeles, there isn’t room at Staten Island’s Richmond Avenue location for another Trader Joe’s to be installed directly across the street.
The Post reached out to Trader Joe’s for comment.
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