KEENE, N.H. (MyKeeneNow) Most 13-year-olds probably aren’t thinking about commercial real estate.

Eli Tebaldi is.

After deciding Keene could use a Trader Joe’s, Tebaldi did what many adults might do: He started looking into how to get the company’s attention. What began as a conversation during a family shopping trip has grown into a grassroots campaign with more than 800 people joining a Facebook group in less than two weeks.

And now, someone from Trader Joe’s real estate team is listening.

The idea took shape during a visit to the Trader Joe’s in Bedford, where Tebaldi began talking with the store manager about his hope that the grocery chain would open a location in Keene. The manager told him about community efforts surrounding the opening of a Trader Joe’s in Ithaca, New York, and gave him information about how customers could contact the company.

Tebaldi took the suggestion and ran with it.

He created a Facebook group focused on bringing Trader Joe’s to the Keene area, hoping to give residents a place to organize their support and, perhaps, demonstrate to the company that there is a market waiting for a store.

“There are about 25,000 people in Keene, including college students, and I joke that at least 23,000 of them love Trader Joe’s,” Tebaldi said. “When I heard that a Facebook group had helped show support for a Trader Joe’s in another community, I thought, why can’t we do that here? I wanted to see how many people would get behind the idea.”

The response came quickly.

But the campaign took a more unexpected turn when Tebaldi received an email from Alex Brickman, who identified himself as a member of Trader Joe’s real estate team.

Brickman said he had heard from “Captain Kyle” at the Nashua Trader Joe’s about Tebaldi’s enthusiasm for the company and his identification of a possible location in Keene.

Then Brickman asked the question Tebaldi had been hoping to hear:

“Where were you thinking? We can take a look!”

For Tebaldi, the email represented something more than simply a response from a large grocery chain. It was an indication that his small campaign had made its way onto the company’s radar.

“I was really excited when I saw the email,” he said. “This started because I really think Trader Joe’s would do well here. Now someone from their real estate team is actually asking about locations. It makes me want to get even more people involved and show them how much support there is for a store in our area.”

There is no indication that Trader Joe’s has committed to opening a store in Keene, and the company has not announced that any particular property is being formally considered.

Still, Tebaldi has already started thinking about where a store might fit.

Among the properties he has suggested are the former Rite Aid site on Winchester Street and the former New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet location on Ash Brook Road. Members of his Facebook group have also floated Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters in Swanzey as another possibility.

For now, those locations remain suggestions from local residents rather than sites selected by Trader Joe’s.

The company currently operates three stores in New Hampshire, in Bedford, Nashua and Portsmouth. The Monadnock Region has no location, although Keene serves as a shopping destination for residents throughout the region and draws customers from neighboring Vermont and Massachusetts.

That broader market is part of Tebaldi’s argument.

He believes the question isn’t simply whether enough people in Keene would shop at Trader Joe’s, but whether the company could draw customers from the surrounding communities as well.

His campaign is now asking those potential customers to make their interest known. Tebaldi encourages residents to join the Facebook group, invite other area residents and submit requests directly to Trader Joe’s through the company’s store-request form.

But the most striking part of the campaign may be how little it took to get started.

There was no formal organization, business plan or economic development committee behind it. There was a teenager who liked a grocery store, wondered why there wasn’t one in his hometown and decided to find out what it would take to change that.

Now, more than 800 people have joined him — and a member of Trader Joe’s real estate team has asked where they think the store should go.

For Tebaldi, that is enough reason to keep asking the question.