{"id":349950,"date":"2026-09-18T04:15:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T04:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349950\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T04:15:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T04:15:03","slug":"trader-joes-uws-opens-with-bare-shelves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349950\/","title":{"rendered":"Trader Joe&#8217;s UWS opens with bare shelves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They need some shelf help.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/09\/13\/lifestyle\/trader-joes-fans-are-sharing-the-best-ways-to-prepare-their-latest-hot-bakery-item-take-my-money\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trader Joe\u2019s<\/a> reopened its Upper West Side location after a five-month renovation this past Saturday, long lines of shoppers stretched down Amsterdam Ave. waiting to see the new and improved space.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But \u201cspace\u201d was all they got, as both floors of the specialty supermarket \u2014 dubbed \u201cthe <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/06\/lifestyle\/trader-joes-planning-to-open-25-more-us-stores-this-year\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">busiest Trader Joe\u2019s<\/a> in the world\u201d because of its upscale, family-friendly location \u2014\u00a0were barely stocked this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The frozen food section at the reopened Trader Joe\u2019s on 72nd Street was empty as of Sunday afternoon. Faran Krentcil<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s giving gulag,\u201d grumbled one young shopper as she scoured the frozen food aisle for a single frozen package of gnocchi. \u201cThey don\u2019t even have bags of salt,\u201d said another frustrated spice seeker.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Also missing on Sunday afternoon: pantry staples like couscous, rice and orzo, most varieties of tomato sauce, all kinds of bacon and most kinds of raw chicken, including ground chicken, whole chicken thighs and whole chicken breasts. <\/p>\n<p>Eager shoppers were left disappointed after seeing the store\u2019s empty shelves. J.C. Rice for NY Post<\/p>\n<p>Yogurt was limited to a few of the less popular flavors (mango, anyone?).<\/p>\n<p>The frozen food section was missing Asian specialties like chicken shu mai and scallion pancakes, frozen Mexican dishes like beef, chicken and vegetarian tamales, every kind of frozen pizza and nearly every variety of mac and cheese. <\/p>\n<p>Cookies were also in short supply, disappointing the Sesame Street set. \u201cLong line for no cookies,\u201d sighed a small girl as she trudged away, biscuit-less.<\/p>\n<p>Pasta sauce, yogurt and basic condiments like salt were also missing. Faran Krentcil<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were some delayed shipments, unfortunately,\u201d said a Trader Joe\u2019s employee to hangry shoppers searching for tomato basil sauce. \u201cBut most of the new stuff is here.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>He recommended the new Chicken Florentine Lasagna as a favorite \u2014 though perhaps that\u2019s because it was one of the only prepared pasta dishes they had. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The store also had a robust pile of<a href=\"https:\/\/www.traderjoes.com\/home\/products\/pdp\/shrimp-chips-garlic-081314\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> garlic shrimp chips<\/a>, the hotly anticipated, Asian-inspired snack that has fully sold out at other New York City locations.<\/p>\n<p>When asked, the famously cheery Trader Joe\u2019s employees had no definitive timeline for when the store \u2014 which first opened its automatic doors in 2010 \u2014 would be fully stocked. \u201cDefinitely later this week,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p>Chicken breasts and thighs were also missing from the store as of Sunday. Faran Krentcil<\/p>\n<p>Until then, perhaps hoard the strawberry gummy candy and pumpkin spice samosas (also sadly missing) from the Chelsea location until further notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They need some shelf help.\u00a0 As Trader Joe\u2019s reopened its Upper West Side location after a five-month renovation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[289,232,57,9,24,55,54,56,2895,35937,62],"class_list":["post-349950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-food-drink","tag-lifestyle","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-shop","tag-trader-joes","tag-upper-west-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}