Southern California Careers / Dream Jobs : Food Buyer Has an Appetite for Work

It was Wednesday at Trader Joe’s South Pasadena headquarters and buyer Kimberly Greenfeld was engaged in the weekly contest for shelf space and customers’ taste buds.

In a daylong food tasting, Greenfeld presented a mouthwatering lineup of foods she hoped would win the approval of her fellow buyers and eventually end up in the specialty food chain’s nearly 70 stores. There was couscous-stuffed cod, mango salsa, instant Thai soup and coconut-based curry and chili-spiked pasta sauces.

In the end, the cod and Thai soup were winners, but the curry had to be reworked (too hot), as did the salsa (too sweet). The pasta sauces, which could be used only as toppings, were rejected as too limited.

“It was a very good tasting,” Greenfeld said. After less successful gatherings, she’s found herself saying, “God, what a waste of my time preparing all this and nothing passed.”

For food fans, Greenfeld’s job may seem like a dream come true: She gets to sample foods from around the world, travel to giant food shows in Europe, and spend hours looking through cookbooks and food and cooking magazines.

But Greenfeld and her taste buds are under constant pressure to perform by finding new products that satisfy gourmet tastes at discount-store prices. Trader Joe’s treats food as fashion, and Greenfeld is one of its top designers.

As one of the chain’s 10 buyers, her purchasing decisions are judged every day by thousands of Trader Joe’s customers. Even the best-tasting chutney won’t stay on the shelf for long if weekly sales fall below $3,500. “Some of my favorite items have been discontinued,” Greenfeld said.

Greenfeld is part of the nation’s complex marketing and distribution network that determines what consumers want and who will supply it. There are more than 360,000 wholesale and retailer buyers in the United States, according to Labor Department statistics.

Although competition for buyer jobs can be fierce, Greenfeld literally walked into hers about eight years ago. Tired of her daily commute to a translations and secretarial job in Century City, the former French language student dropped her resume off at the Trader Joe’s offices near her home in South Pasadena.

The only opening was for a receptionist, but the company said she might be able to move up after six months into an assistant buyer’s position. She took the job.

“I was a big Trader Joe’s supporter. . . . I loved the quirky little things they had and the great prices,” said Greenfeld, who first shopped at Trader Joe’s as a student at Occidental College, where she majored in French and minored in theater arts.

Greenfeld had no experience as a retail food buyer, and her previous jobs were only indirectly related to food, including a job waiting tables in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. She describes herself as an OK cook.

But Greenfeld demonstrated the intelligence, curiosity and interest in food that Trader Joe’s looks for in its buying staff. She is now a senior buyer and oversees the purchase of such products as canned seafood and meats, frozen seafood and meats, stews, soups, sauces, pestos and pasta. She was recently named chief buyer for the chain’s East Coast stores, which are scheduled to open within two years.

With little formal training, Greenfeld relied on the advice of other buyers and her own mistakes. She once committed the company to buying tamarind soda, which flopped with customers. “Afterward, we wondered what the heck we were going to do with the stuff,” Greenfeld said. It was donated to a food bank.

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Besides presentations from vendors, Greenfeld gets inspiration for new products by reading cooking and food magazines. She’s also gotten ideas from customers, who have sent her the labels of products they found on their travels abroad. During a Super Bowl party, she got the recipe for a chunky olive pesto spread that she’s trying to get into product development.

But Greenfeld can’t rely on her taste buds alone in finding successful items. She must be able to negotiate low prices from vendors in order to deliver the bargains Trader Joe’s customers expect. In fact, some of Greenfeld’s biggest hits include low-priced foods such as a line of instant soups that sell for as little as 79 cents.

She must also struggle to find a middle ground between customers’ demands for healthy fare and their penchant for indulgences. She prides herself on bridging that gap with popular items such as the chain’s fat-free black bean dip.

“Customers go wild over it,” Greenfeld said.