A rebel Canadian grocer dedicated to the unauthorized reselling of Trader Joe’s products has closed its doors, bringing an end to a five-year legal battle that pitted the one-man operation against one of the most popular grocery stores in the US.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Mike Hallatt, the owner of Pirate Joe’s in Vancouver. “Because the prospect of going to trial against a major corporation when you’re one guy – you get lots of opinions from lawyers telling you: ‘Run.’”



Pirate Joe’s launched in 2012, its shelves stocked with goods clandestinely shopped from Trader Joe’s stores across the Pacific Northwest and hauled across the border by Hallatt.

The operation – which has seen Hallatt spend an estimated US$1.3m on Trader Joe’s products to be sold in Vancouver at a markup – offered Canadians a taste of the American store, backed by what Hallatt described as the right of people and businesses to resell products that have been lawfully purchased.



Trader Joe’s, however, viewed Hallatt’s business plan differently. The California-based corporation sent Hallatt a cease-and-desist order soon after Pirate Joe’s was launched. It was followed by a trademark infringement case, in which the corporation alleged in a US court that the Vancouver store was hurting its brand.

The court initially sided with Hallatt, but the decision was overturned by the ninth circuit court of appeals, setting the stage for a drawn-out legal battle and turning Hallatt – who describes himself as one of Trader Joe’s best customers – into the target of a company generally known for its progressive values.

“I call it the legal anvil falling from the sky,” said Hallatt. “For me to challenge that required substantial means, which I do not have.”



After a dallying with a crowdfunding campaign, Pirate Joe’s hashed out an agreement with the corporation, and the Vancouver store closed its doors for good on Wednesday.

“I’m mostly relieved, I have to tell you,” said Hallatt. “Many times I’ve thought I’ve got to just give this up, this is ridiculous. Then people would come up to me and thank me for doing it. That was the curse: we had so many people who love what we were up to and yet it was just so devilishly hard to do.”



The long-running legal dispute had cast a cloud of doubt over his business model, he said. “Business hates uncertainty. When you’re sued by your supplier, that’s like weaponised uncertainty. Basically your supplier hates your guts.”

Hallatt – who has been kicked out of various Trader Joe’s locations many times – began to feel like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat each time he managed to make a haul across the border.

“Every day I thought: there’s no way I’m going to get over the border. There’s no way I can get into Trader Joe’s, there’s no way this is going to work today,” he said. “There’s no way that the federal government is not going to come down and confiscate everything because there’s not French labels on it.”

Trader Joe’s, owned through a trust belonging to the German family that owns the supermarket giant Aldi, declined to comment on the closing of Pirate Joe’s. But Hallatt pointed the company’s tight controls, often following products from harvest to store shelves, to explain the company’s concerns. “And then this guy comes along with this funky white van and throws it in there and barrels up the highway and throws it into this funky white store. They’ve got their point.”

The 57-year-old is now focused on finding another use for the storefront in Vancouver, fielding suggestions that range from a brew pub to a dog food bakery. The demise of Pirate Joe’s, he insisted, wasn’t a tragedy. “It was a great run,” he said, and one that established that a market exists for Trader Joe’s north of the border. “So I think if they were ever to open in another country, Canada might be first on the list. We’ll see.”