Trader Joe's in Chattanooga? -update/correction

Shortly after the announcement that Nashville was getting a Trader Joe's, I got an email from a friendly, yet envious, fellow named Jay Craven in Chattanooga lamenting the "grocery store desert" in which he lives. I suggested he start a petition.

Well, someone named Jason Kelley did and got more than 1000 signatures in a week! It's at 1447 as of this post. I signed just a few hours ago (my folks are from there) and I was number 1362.

I think his petition will have to end up being one of the top 25 petitions for petitiononline.com tomorrow because it is climbing really freakin fast.

Keep up the good work, Jason!

(My original post credited Jay with starting the petition, but he just contacted me about it).

Beat Austin? Check. What's the Next Move?

While I will feel a little more confident when the lead is more significant, WE DID IT. We have replaced Austin as the current online petition with the most signatures (as far as I can tell). So, what’s the next move? In the words of another TJ’s fan that contacted me last week, “Is there a great plan behind this?”

I don't have a grand plan, but I do have some ideas for next steps. I think we need to find some folks with commercial property for sale or lease that would be a good fit in terms of location and square footage and we need to get them involved in the process of “wooing” Trader Joe’s (that’s the company's language for it). Additionally, we need to make connections with individuals in the commercial real estate business to do some research on locations and demographics and contact the company with suggestions.

While I appreciate people throwing out potential locations, what we really need is for a few individuals to take action and contact the owner(s) of the locations that you think would be a good fit.

I also think that we need to use the petition to leverage local decision makers (elected officials, chamber of commerce, etc.) to reach out to Trader Joe's as well. If we can get some business folks and some politicians working on it, I think it will be a nice complement to the more grassroots people power approach.

Anyone want to join me in this phase? Send me an email. I’m not particularly connected when it comes to commercial real estate professionals or chamber folks. I could use your help!

Thanks, to everyone who helped us reach the small goal of beating Austin. With that success under our belt, let’s keep the ball rolling.

Austin--You Know You Want to Beat 'Em!

OK folks, we are SO CLOSE. We are less than 200 (update on 9/29/07: make that less than 30, now) signatures away from surpassing Austin in their petition gathering.

They have been gathering signatures since 2006. We have been doing this for 5 freakin weeks!

A big shout out to the Tennessean for helping us garner a TREMENDOUS number of signatures in a short time (over 400 today!) Having the link to the petition in the article was very helpful. THANK YOU!

Nearing 2000!

Last night, I took a look at the petition and was like, "Hey, we are up to 1700. Cool."

This morning, I took a look and was like, "Whoa, we're over 1800. What happened?"

Then, I took a look at my email and my sister had written to let me know there was a screenshot of the petition on the front page of the Living section in the Tennessean. Having just gone to the website, we are also on the homepage of the online version.

[Update: As of the afternoon, it was moved to the the living section online.]

THANK YOU, TENNESSEAN!

Now, a few hours later, we are approaching 2000!

I was recently considering cancelling my subscription to save some bucks, since we get it at the office, too. You've just saved yourself at least one subscriber!

Petition Stats

200 signatures in first 12 hours
300 signatures in first 24 hours
400 signatures in 4 days
500 signatures in 5 days
600 signatures in 6 days
1000 signatures in 9 days
1200 signatures in 2 weeks
1400 signatures in 4 weeks

(update on 9/26/07)
1700 signatures in 5 weeks
(Thank you for the bump, All the Rage!)

(update on 9/29/07)
2300 signatures in 39 days
(Thank you for the bump, Tennessean!)

Woo-Hoo! 1000 signatures in 9 days!!

Nashville rocks more than I knew!

We just hit one thousand "signatures" a few minutes ago after only nine days!

I'll be calling Trader Joe's Corporate in the morning to let them know and to try to get the skinny on what they are thinking.

But we're not done yet! We still have to beat the pants off of Austin, so we're not even halfway yet. KEEP IT UP!

Let's Kick Some Austin Butt!

It's funny that I didn't realize that Austin was doing the same thing on the same website when I created our petition. We even used the same language in the title. Creepy!

What's more, their effort has been going on since 2006. They had about 1200 signatures on July 31st of this year. Then an article came out http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/BIZ/707310322/1001 that discussed Whole Foods versus Trader Joe's (with regard to the proposed merger of Whole Foods and Wild Oats and the Whole Foods claim that Trader Joe's is the chain's most serious competition).

The article profiled the Austin petition because it just happens to be the home base for Whole Foods. Since the article came out, their petition has blossomed to over 2200 signatures.

Let's kick their butt!