All Aboard Trader Joe's SoHo Ship

Trader Joe's last week dropped anchor in New York's swanky SoHo neighborhood. The store is the Monrovia, Calif.-based retailer's sixth location in Manhattan, and followed the opening earlier this month of another store about 100 or so blocks north on the Upper West Side.

SoHo is a neighborhood of cast-iron foundaries that later became trendy loft apartments, and a model for dozens of vibrant, gentrifying neighborhoods throughout the city. The new store brings value, customary quirkiness and a bit of the streetscape inside, joining an array of  shopping boutiques and restaurants that dot the area.

The store is part of the One Soho Square project, an office redevelopment project located at 6th Avenue and Spring Street. On opening morning, a steel drum band and crew members passing out Hawaiian leis greeted shoppers in the vestibule.

Cut flowers in steel buckets are positioned in the street-facing window, giving them natural light and providing shoppers a burst of color from inside and outside the store.

The store uses Trader Joe's customary "hand-painted" signage, providing attractive prices along with product descriptions and usage tips.

A look into the produce section shows that bananas are priced per unit and not per pound, which helps speed checkout and efficiency.

Trader Joe's "guarantee"—a message of its advocacy for the shopper—is hand-painted on a support column along with a building scene from the neighborhood, a theme carried in mural artwork throughout the store.

Store Manager John Butindaro—or, in Trader Joe's parlance, Captain Butindaro—transferred from another Trader Joe's location in the city.

Trader Joe's private label, craft-style Boatswain Double IPA sits in a large endcap display at an unheard-of Manhattan price of $4.99 per six-pack. The store also carries a variety of name-brand beers.

A selection of packaged steaks populate the meat department, as in all Trader Joe's stores, there is no service meat.

Trader Joe's has become famous not just for its own brands, but its own products. Its Speculoos cookie butter—based on a cookie recipe popular in parts of Holland and Belgium—is a crowd favorite.

The "fire escape" model above this selection of cheese recalls the factories-turned-lofts of the SoHo neighborhood, elements of which are echoed throughout the store.

The popular Joe's O's cereal (one might compare them to Cheerios) is displayed on an endcap in the grocery department. Other endcaps merchandise Joe-Joe's cookies, the retailer's take on the Oreo.

A wide variety of pizzas in the frozen section include barbecue chicken, mushroom and black truffle, and arugula, to name a few. The section appeared well-shopped less than an hour after opening.

An employee directs shoppers to one of 24 registers that were available on opening morning. The 19,000-square-foot store feels considerably larger than its Union Square neighbor, which is famous for checkout lines that at times can circle its entire 11,000-square-foot interior.