The Biggest Recalls In Trader Joe's History

There's no other grocery store chain quite like Trader Joe's. With its unique array of affordable products, Hawaiian-shirted employees, and rotating seasonal favorites, it's found a way to be a budget-friendly version of Whole Foods without feeling like a compromise. After more than six decades in the business, it boasts over 570 stores across 43 states and is estimated to bring in about 18% of grocery store shoppers nationwide (per Statista). Its eponymous private label also garners the highest brand awareness of any organic food brand in the country, beating Whole Foods' private label 365 by 26 percentage points (per Statista).

More than 80% of Trader Joe's products are private label, meaning that only the company (or third-party contractors) produce these products, and only Trader Joe's can sell them. This helps the company keep prices low since middlemen like distributors and wholesalers are not involved. It also provides it with greater control over its supply chain, including the ability to quickly dream up, design, and sell unique products. While this certainly has its high-profile upsides, including the seemingly endless stream of quirky, one-of-a-kind customer favorites (Cookie Butter, anyone?), it also comes with risks. When Trader Joe's products get recalled, the company can't point the finger as easily as other grocery store chains since its name is almost always emblazoned on labels, and in recent years, this has led to some public embarrassment. From insects to metal, here are the biggest recalls that have tested the beloved company in recent years.

One common reason for recalling products is mislabeling. For people with food allergies, warnings of trace ingredients can be a matter of life and death, and consequently, food inspection entities take the matter extremely seriously. Trader Joe's has fallen afoul of mislabeling on multiple occasions, including in early 2023 when it discovered that its Lemon Chicken & Arugula Salad sold in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington did not contain crucial allergen information about the inclusion of wheat. Although the products featured the correct top label, the bottom label was the ingredient statement for the Broccoli Slaw and Kale Salad with White Chicken Meat, which did not contain wheat. As a result, customers with severe wheat allergies were at risk, and the FSIS issued a recall. Luckily, no allergic reactions were reported.

The incident is one of many examples of how proactive food regulators are when such issues are flagged up. The FSIS urged customers who had purchased the mislabeled salad to throw them away or return them to the store immediately, even though people without wheat allergies would presumably have been okay to eat them.

For many of us, making coffee in the morning is the preamble to properly waking up. Whether you're using a French press, a cafetière, or simply pouring a few tablespoons of instant powder into a mug, your brain is somewhere between autopilot and zombieland. Until you take that first sip, you may as well be snoring still. So, it must have come as a real shock to Trader Joe's customers to learn in early 2023 that their cups of morning brew might not be safe to drink. In March, the company issued a voluntary recall, explaining that it had been notified by its supplier that certain jars of Instant Cold Brew Coffee might contain shards of glass.

No injuries were reported, but some instant coffee devotees might have reconsidered their preferences. Your first cup of Joe needs to be strong enough to wake you up in the morning, but not, presumably, by slicing through your esophagus.

Now, we know that listeria and salmonella are dangerous and potentially deadly contaminants, but when you hear that your food might contain insects (and not even the culinary kind), we can't help but let out a silent scream of horror. It seems we're not alone, because when Trader Joe's announced in 2023 that its broccoli cheddar soup might contain insects, it made headlines across the internet, even on platforms that rarely comment on the food world. The company's plight was not helped by the fact that the official name of the product was "Unexpected Broccoli Cheddar Soup," an irony that, in this case, was all too real.

According to the FDA, the voluntary recall affected nearly 11,000 cases of the soup that were distributed throughout Florida, Illinois, California, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The agency elaborated on the Trader Joe's announcement, explaining that the insects were hiding in the broccoli florets. No adverse effects were reported from the incident, but we're not sure about the emotional state of those who might have spotted the "Unexpected" ingredients floating in their soup bowls.

Unless you've worked in a food processing facility, you probably can't speak to the complexity that goes into the job. With such large-scale operations, it's surprising that things don't go wrong more often, a fact we're reminded of every time a company issues a food recall. One of the most common reasons for recalls is the mislabeling of products. Whether it's putting the wrong item into the wrong bag or mixing up nutrition labels, there are a lot of ways to mix things up. One Trader Joe's supplier did just that in 2023 when its Hatch Green Chile and Cheese Tamales, which contained milk, were mistakenly packaged in Black Bean Tamale Bags, which did not.

Under normal circumstances, this might not have caused much of a stir. No adverse health effects were reported as a result of the mistake, and the company immediately pulled the product from circulation. However, the news made headlines because it happened to be Trader Joe's sixth recall in less than six weeks, prompting media outlets to trumpet the concern of formerly devoted TJ's shoppers who had taken to social media to voice their mounting distress over the company's competence.

There are a lot of so-called foreign objects that you can imagine sneaking their way into food products. A single human hair, for example, or a small piece of grit. You can even imagine how glass might have ended up in jars of Trader Joe's instant coffee. The jars were made of glass, after all, and it only takes a single broken one to throw shards everywhere. But metal? How does that get into your food?

Customers were left asking this question in the summer of 2023 when Trader Joe's supplier Treehouse Foods recalled 13,000 cases of Multigrain Crackers with Sunflower and Flax Seeds distributed around California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington due to fears that they contained pieces of metal. The information was sparse. Trader Joe's assured customers that no injuries had been reported and all products had been removed from circulation, but the question still lingers: how did metal get into the product and how did it manage to hide itself in nearly wafer-thin crackers?

Recalls often provide an unusual glimpse into the secretive supply chains that fuel our food consumption. Unlike the supermarkets whose shelves they stock, manufacturers are rarely household names, and when one announces a recall, the list of grocery stores it comes into contact with can be surprising. One such incident arose in February 2024 when the F.D.A. announced a far-reaching recall of dairy products made by Rizo-Lopez Foods, Inc. due to listeria contamination. It involved over a hundred products sold under a head-spinning number of familiar brands including Trader Joe's, Dole, Whole Foods 365, Safeway, Costco, and HEB.

Unlike many other recalls, which are issued before any customers fall ill, this one was related to an outbreak of listeriosis, the illness caused by the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, that had been ongoing since 2014. Only 26 cases were confirmed, but 23 resulted in hospitalization and two resulted in death. The recall affected stores across the U.S. and into Canada and included products like Whole Foods 365 Ricotta Cheese, Trader Joe's Chicken Enchiladas Verdes, Dole Chopped Avocado Ranch Kit, and Costco Chicken Street Taco Kit.

One of the most prominent examples of how Trader Joe's differentiates itself from its competitors is the ice cream department. From the frozen spin on their iconic Cookie Butter to the lavender-hued Ube Ice Cream, the chain keeps things original, and customers keep coming back for more. But things got a little too original in the frozen treats aisle in 2017 when tiny metal fragments were found in the chain's Matcha Green Tea Ice Cream. The lime-colored dessert had been a favorite of many shoppers for its sweet, faintly grassy flavor and rich, velvety texture, but even die-hard fans will draw the line at metal.

Trader Joe's removed the product from its freezers and issued an appeal to its customers to throw away any pints they might have at home. It assured consumers that no injuries were associated with the recall, but did not reveal how it became aware of the metal fragments, nor did it answer the most pressing question of all: how metal got into the ice cream in the first place.