The 1 million-square-foot project, which spans three buildings, is a first for the grocer and the largest economic development project ever in Simpson County.

Trader Joe’s is building a $260 million automated distribution facility in south-central Kentucky that’s planned to open before the end of the year, Simpson County Judge-Executive Mason Barnes told WGB Monday.

Four months after being approved for state tax incentives, Trader Joe’s purchased 160 acres in an industrial park and is investing $260 million in a three-building, 1 million-square-foot campus which is reportedly the largest economic development project in the history of Simpson County.

The 1 million-square-foot robotic facility—the first of its kind for Trader Joe’s—will span three buildings in the new Stone-Givens Industrial Park in Franklin, Kentucky, and will eventually employ about 900 people, Barnes said. Work began on the project last week.

The development will include warehousing, distribution and cold storage areas, which will provide space for a prepared foods processing area for the grocer, Barnes said, adding that county officials hadn’t been given many details about what the buildings would be used for.

The Trader Joe’s development will be the largest dollar investment in Simpson County’s history, Barnes said. The county, which is about 45 miles north of Nashville, has a population of nearly 20,000 people—but it’s growing, he said.

“The good thing to me is the diversity in industry,” he said. “There’s a lot of automotive-related industry in our area.”

In September, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority approved $500,000 in tax incentives for Trader Joe’s to encourage the grocer to build in the area.

The grocer has not made any plans to open a market in the county, Barnes said, but he and other officials said they are hopeful that will happen, given the proximity to the distribution facility.

Trader Joe’s currently has three stores in Kentucky and two in Nashville.

Groceries aren’t taxed in Kentucky, but they are taxed at 4% in Tennessee, he noted, adding that, at any given time, nearly half of the vehicles in the area’s Walmart parking lot have out-of-state license plates.

“We’re hoping they locate some in this south-central Kentucky area,” he said.

Trader Joe’s opened its first store in 1967 and now operates more than 500 locations around the country. The grocer opened a new store in Glastonbury, Connecticut, earlier this month and has another slated to open in Draper, Utah, later this year.

Trader Joe’s looked at potential sites in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky before landing in Simpson County, which is among the state’s fastest-growing counties.

In conjunction with the project, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is investing $2.4 million in road improvements and the installation of a traffic light.

Monrovia, Calif.-based Trader Joe’s has more than 560 stores in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

Trader Joe Wrote a Memoir

The book is a sort of “Kitchen Confidential” for the grocery business, but without the drugs or rage.

*In “Becoming Trader Joe,” Joe Coulombe writes that he was prone to engaging in acts of “selfish altruism.”***Photograph by John Blackmer**

In the sixties, a thirty-two-year-old entrepreneur named Joe Coulombe presided over a midsize chain of California convenience stores called Pronto Markets. The company, which lived in the shadows of 7-Eleven, was nearly bankrupt. One afternoon, a desperate egg supplier paid Coulombe a visit. He had a major problem: he had far too many extra-large eggs. In order to off-load them promptly, he offered them to Coulombe at the same price as the plain old large eggs. This meant that Pronto Markets could sell extra-large eggs—which were twelve per cent per dozen larger than the large eggs, a meaningful difference to customers—at a discounted price, undercutting other chains.

The success of the discounted extra-large eggs helped buoy Coulombe’s stores, and eventually allowed him to embark on his path to grocery-business notoriety. A few years later, he used the financial resources and customer insights that he’d acquired through Pronto Markets to start Trader Joe’s, a grocery store known for its seemingly irreconcilable characteristics: high-quality, health-minded foods self-branded and sold at bargain prices. Coulombe would build an empire rooted in small-scale cleverness and common sense, exploiting loopholes and product discontinuations, zigging where others zagged, and turning the rest of the grocery business’s trash into treasure for Trader Joe’s.