A Woman Finds a Used Halls Wrapper in Her Sealed Trader Joe’s Breadsticks

Going grocery shopping isn’t typically someone’s ideal afternoon, but it’s not the worst, especially at Trader Joe’s. However, when a woman finds a Halls wrapper sealed inside of the packaging of her Trader Joe’s branded breadsticks, we have a lot of questions, concerns, and gripes. Mainly … how could they allow this to happen?!

Trader Joe’s is supposed to be the sanctum of the grocery store — a haven of low-priced organic and healthy food — and now its precious name is getting dragged through the mud. The woman, TikToker Jen Curley, is an avid TJ’s fan, but she had to let the TikTok community know what she found.

In a minute-long video, Jen gasped and showed us what she found. With the caption, “Sorry to tattle but whatttt,” Jen reluctantly shows us her TJ’s breadsticks. “I don’t know if I want to tell you guys,” she starts. “You guys know what a huge Trader Joe’s stan I am, but I feel like I have to sh—” and cuts herself off as she nearly gags with disgust.

“Remember earlier, I bought this, these garlic and cheese breadsticks,” Jen shows us. “I have not opened it yet. What do you see? What do you see? What the f---?” As she gets the breadsticks closer to the camera, we can see that a Halls wrapper is just stuffed inside of the packaging alongside the breadsticks.

She shakes the bag and continues, “Like a Halls cough drop wrapper? Stuck to a breadstick?” She gags (rightfully so) as she puts the bag down. Not only is there a wrapper in the packaging but the wrapper is stuck to the breadstick, which means that whichever TJ’s packaging employee was sucking on cough drops opened the drop and touched the breadstick in the same breath.

Plus, this hints that whoever was packaging these breadsticks had a cough and was sick, so that doesn’t make us feel great about where our food is coming from! For the most part, we’re not alone in this perspective.

Commenters quickly chimed in with their own Trader Joe’s horror stories. “I assumed it was moldy,” one person said. “All of TJ's bread products mold at the speed of light.” Another added, “Something is going on at TJ’s … I got a dragonfly in my bag of arugula this week. And it was twitching.” How does that even happen?

We can understand bread molding quickly due to poor temperature control or mismatched expiration dates, but a live dragonfly in the arugula? Trader Joe’s definitely needs to get back on top of its quality control.

One person actually pointed out TJ’s long history of recalls. “I love TJ’s but if you pay attention to recalls, they have a lot of them, particularly on precut produce and lettuce,” they said. Well, these are breadsticks, not lettuce! But even still, who knows how many breadsticks have been coughed on?

Do better, TJ’s. We were all rooting for you!