by Steven Doyle
A new trend in supermarket super marketing? We hope not. A New York purveyor, NetCost Market, recently installed the grocer’s version of Smell-O-Vision that reminds us of the 1981 John Waters film, Polyester (filmed in Odorama), that provided tiny scratch and sniff cards and prompted the viewer to scratch at appropriate moments.
Waters squealed at having the film’s audiences actually “pay to smell shit”.
The NetCost contraption may not exactly smell like excrement, but certainly something is fishy when a market feels the need to substitute fresh aromas of baked bread with a fake “Rosemary Focaccia” or “Smoky Bacon”.
The NetCost, located on East 16th in Sheepshead Bay, recently installed the tiny black wall-mounted smell machines developed by a company called ScentAir, the largest provider of piped-in scent devices in the world.
That begged us to think just how many successful scent-providers there may be lurking across the globe.
The trickery might possibly be working as a store representative described the produce section’s scent selections of strawberry and grapefruit have actually boosted sales of produce eight percent.
At TJ’s we are proud of the NON smell in the market. Fresh fish doesn’t smell bad. Old fish smells bad. We don’t plan on pumping in fake fresh fish smell any time soon.
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