However, Trader Joe’s international brand is not the only line of food items that will change over time.
National supermarket chain Trader Joe’s announced on Monday that it was renaming its international food.
Trader Joe’s previously branded food products that represented foreign cultures with chin names such as “Trader José,” “Trader Giotto’s,” and “Trader Ming’s.”
But as the tide of the national discourse on race has changed, it seems customers are no longer laughing. Grocery Ownership has now promised to remove all references to international sound names from its products.
Out with the Old
In a statement, Trader Joe’s National Director of Public Relations, Kenya Friend-Daniel, apologized for the insensitivity. She acknowledged that the labelling of Chinese food as “Trader Mings” and Mexican food as “Trader Jose” began as an “easy effort to include everyone” and alienated only consumers.
“With this in mind, we decided to use only the name of Trader Joe in our products.” She said all products will be “very soon” in the updated packaging.
“The packaging for many products has already been changed, but there are a small number of products in which the packaging is still in operation,” she said.
Call for change
As of early Monday, Change.org petition against Trader Joe’s has received more than 2,000 signatures. It demanded that the grocery chain “remove racist label and packaging from its stores.”
According to the petition, it is a crime to portray Trader Joe’s other cultures as sexy. This excluded such cultures from the “normal” American identity, which implies the name, Joe.
According to the petition, the “common thread” between all international trades is to promote this “charisma”. As a result, it does not celebrate these cultures. Instead, it “helps many more and distances them from the perceived ‘nature’.”
It concludes with the statement, “Current branding, with this essential context, will then become less trivial and infamous than before.”
However, Trader Joe’s international brand is not the only line of food items that will change over time. A few weeks ago, the food company PepsiCo announced the permanent retirement of Aunt Jemima Pancake brand.
For more than a century, Aunt Jemima used the racist stereotype of a black, maid as the logo and name of the product.
