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Pirate Joe's owner Michael Hallatt.Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

Fuelling the North American hunger for Speculoos Cookie Butter is a particularly delicious version made by quirky American grocer Trader Joe's. The thing is, the store doesn't have any Canadian outlets – which is how Vancouver reseller Pirate Joe's came to be. Michael Hallatt is the brains behind the unaffiliated, unauthorized reseller, which can be found online or in Vancouver. In 2013, Trader Joe's lost an attempt to shut the pirate down.

When you're picking up items from Trader Joe's, what's the process like?

I've got teams of shoppers. They're basically single moms, or couples who look like shoppers. If I use Canadians, they won't get over the border, because shopping is working. So they have to be American. I give marching orders: Go hit up the chip section or go and hit the jams. Once I went into a thrift store to cross-dress so that I could go shopping without getting recognized. So I'll get this van full of groceries after about an hour and I head back with it all, and I get over the border with this crazy, jam-packed van. They make me lay it all out and we go through it all.

How much product do you bring back?

I think we're doing seven or eight grand a week now.

Sometimes Trader Joe's rations its supplies to prevent hoarding, right?

For a while that happened with cookie butter. It went exponential because of people in the Philippines. It's all the rage over there. We would have people come in who wanted to send it to the Philippines.

How popular is the cookie butter these days?

It's a big hit with the students and a lot of ovulating women come in for it. Sometimes we tell customers that if they're ovulating, they'll love this stuff.

I can't tell if you're joking right now.

It's true, we do say it. But it's just a joke. We like to have fun with our customers. The cookie butter is one of our top sellers. Now they have variations on it: crunchy cookie butter, cocoa swirl and cookies and cream. And they've also got dark-chocolate peanut-butter cups with cookie butter instead of peanut butter. They've even taken cookie butter and put it between two cookies. Those are ridiculous – those are starting to sell like crazy.

Before you won your legal battle, you kept going despite a warning from Trader Joe's. Was it just a matter of principle?

Yeah. Eff you, don't push me around.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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