When I was a child, a Trader Joe’s opened in the small Central Coast town eight minutes north of my own. It was an event. 

Previously, the nearest Trader Joe’s had been an hour away round-trip in San Luis Obispo. You think its mint chip ice cream is surviving 30 minutes in a hot minivan? Absolutely no way. That thing was gonna melt by the time I got it to the freezer, and then it was going to develop ice crystals, and then it was going to be weird and dry and crispy, its once delicious, perfectly creamy texture completely and irrevocably lost. 

But a Trader Joe’s less than 10 minutes away in charming Templeton? The entire populations of neighboring cities Atascadero and Paso Robles seemed to cram into that impossibly tiny parking lot, so much so that the store had to open a dirt overflow lot. 

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Now I’m an adult, and I’ve moved out of my small town and to the big city, where the streets all have sidewalks, and amenities like Trader Joe’s are easier to come by.

Or at least, they should be.

FILE: A new Trader Joe’s opened in south Reno, Nev., in August 2024.

They aren’t for me, because the big city I moved to was Vallejo, a city of more than 120,000 that has exactly one fewer Trader Joe’s than 8,000-person Templeton. Which is to say, it has no Trader Joe’s. 

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If I want to buy Trader Joe’s mint chip ice cream, I have to drive 10 minutes south to Pinole and pay an $8.50 bridge toll on the way back, or 20 minutes north to Fairfield. Given the inland Bay Area’s temperatures, I’m not feeling confident about the fate of my ice cream by the time I get home.

Which is why for years Vallejo residents have been begging the cult grocery store to come to our city. (Well, likely not just for the ice cream. I’m sure other residents have their own favorites they’d like to indulge in, like Product Hall of Famer Teeny Tiny Avocados or longtime customer favorite Butter Chicken. But if you haven’t tried it yet, the Trader Joe’s mint chip ice cream is the platonic ideal of mint chip ice cream: The texture is smooth and rich, and the flavor is minty without tipping over into toothpaste territory. The little chocolate squares are just thin enough to melt on your tongue at the end of each bite. An equivalent ice cream from a specialty brand would cost me twice as much and come in a carton half as big. GOD I want that ice cream.) 

It seems just about every week I see a post on Nextdoor about how we need a Trader Joe’s. It’s been such an ongoing demand that a decade ago, one Vallejoan launched a petition to convince Trader Joe’s to open a store in our city. 

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FILE: Employees are seen at the entrance to a new Trader Joe’s in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood on Friday, May 17, 2024.

“We are the most diverse city in the nation and two of our largest employers are Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health,” the petition starter, Erika Snyder, wrote. “We have a population of over 120,000 people which is 9,000 more than Fairfield, CA.”

Not only does Vallejo have more people than Fairfield (though that gap has narrowed since the petition was first posted), but it’s one of only three of the Bay Area’s 10 largest cities that don’t have a Trader Joe’s. But while residents of Santa Clara and Hayward can just pop over the border to Trader Joe’s in San Jose and Castro Valley, respectively, Vallejo is geographically cut off from its nearest Steamed Pork & Ginger Soup Dumplings supplier.

The Change.org petition has garnered more than 5,000 signatures, nearly enough to populate Templeton. Many of those came in the past two weeks as the petition picked up steam again through shares on Nextdoor. The most recent, as of writing, came five hours ago.

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FILE: A customer enters the new Trader Joe’s in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood on Friday, May 17, 2024.

Snyder, the petition’s author, makes good points: Vallejo is a huge, diverse city with a thriving and entrenched health care industry. Its residents have dollars to spend. Costco, another retail chain with a cult following, is in the process of building a massive new location in Vallejo just down the road from its existing warehouse, a project it has been pursuing for a decade and a half. While we have a diverse array of international markets, from Cardenas to Island Pacific, we are also suffering in the stranglehold of big Safeway, which until recently had three stores in town.

But while Safeway offers most grocery essentials, it has also repeatedly jacked up prices since the pandemic and locked most of its goods away behind plexiglass. If I want to buy floss at Safeway, I have to press a call button to get a clerk to fetch it for me, and there’s a chance that the price of that floss will be artificially inflated.

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Which is to say there’s room for a grocery store like Trader Joe’s that offers affordable essentials alongside specialty products that can’t be found anywhere else.

And Vallejo has the space: Safeway just closed one of its three Vallejo stores, and if that space is too big, there’s also an empty CVS and an empty Walgreens. Trader Joe’s would have its pick of locations. And I would have my pick of dark chocolate peanut butter cups, and frozen gyoza, and yummy-smelling seasonal candle trios and affordable gel sunscreen, the last of which I’m telling you right now is the best deal in the store.

FILE: An interior view of the new Trader Joe’s in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood on Friday, May 17, 2024.

The grocer was on an expansion tear in 2025, with plans to open at least 12 new locations nationwide, including three in Southern California. I reached out to a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s to see whether Vallejo was on the list for 2026. Nakia Rohde said there are no plans to open a Vallejo location currently, but the company is “actively looking at hundreds of neighborhoods across the country, including many in the Bay Area, as we hope to open more neighborhood stores each year.”

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She encouraged people to submit requests for new locations through Trader Joe’s website.

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“There are no guarantees, but being wanted matters to us,” she said via email.

Trader Joe’s, consider this my formal request.

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And, as long as your executives are doing my bidding, bring back the spicy Thai-inspired noodle salad! That thing was bomb, and every day I am without, it hurts a little more — almost as much as living without a store in my hometown. 

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