Trader Joe's (aka TJs) is a chain of smallish grocery stores located on both coasts. Everything is cheap and lots of items are gourmet-ish at the same price or cheaper than you would pay for swill. All the essentials (vitamins, water, chocolate, beer, power/clif/luna bars, soy and rice milk, Indian food) are there and cheap...the deal is that there is very little overlap: one purveyor of corn flakes, not 16. It is nice: all that redundancy means longer aisles in the regular stores, whereas TJs is a surgical strike.

Due to the high cost-of-living, CA denizens have been known to make housing choices on nearness to TJs.