Volume 2, No. 6. March 22, 2002
New Arrivals
It's
a talking tree!
Pearlmart Shoprite in Jackson,
New Jersey, announces the arrival of a talking tree, February 19, 2002. Measurements:
22 feet tall (7 meters), 8-foot diameter (2 meters), 4-by-8-foot walk-through
(1-by-2 meters) and 16 witticisms. Delivered by Custom Creations and Gilderfluke
& Co.
Six Flags Great Adventure
has competition 10 miles up the road. It's a supermarket. "We try to make shopping
fun," said Jim Haslett, vice president of operations and a partner of Pearlmart
Shoprite, which has five stores in north-central New Jersey. Its latest is a
70,000 square-foot (21,500-square-meter) full-service supermarket with
extensive theming and humorous signage. For example, over the seafood counter
hangs a depiction of a fisherman being pulled out of his boat by an oversized
fish. "It shows the fish winning," Haslett said. "But it's a friendly fish so
it won't scare the children."
The store's entertainment
centerpiece—standing, fittingly, in the produce section—is the talking
tree, the first time the food chain has taken its penchant for entertaining
customers to the level of animatronics. The tree's eyes move as it mouths encouragement
for children to eat vegetables and tells bad jokes ("Where do watermelons go
on vacation? John Cougar's Melon Camp"). Though part of the produce section
the tree is strategically located near the seafood counter and the deli, places
where customers generally have to wait while being served. While they wait,
their children make friends with the tree.
By installing an animatronic
tree, Pearlmart Shoprite epitomizes a further fusion of the amusement industry
and retail businesses. When THE LOOP announced the new arrival of a family entertainment
center inside a Covington, Kentucky, toy store (THE
LOOP, November 16, 2001), we broached the prospect that such blurring
of the retail/entertainment lines could be a trend in the making. A supermarket
seems to represent the concept's furthest frontier because food shopping is
not only an essential day-to-day task, it is inherently unentertaining.
Haslett looks to the
amusement industry to glean entertainment value out of visiting a supermarket.
"We don't want to be an amusement park," he said. "I looked at the carousels
like they have in malls, but we really can't put that kind of equipment in a
store. But we do want to have the theme of fun. If we can have people enjoy
shopping, which is a difficult task, they'll choose us over somebody else."
That they seeme to do. Thanks to a wise-cracking tree, customers are returning to the Pearlmart Shoprite to take in shopping and a show.
Congratulations
for a successful opening!
A
tree grows
The notion is preposterous: make
food shopping so fun, people want to come back for more. The result of that
notion, a tree that talks to customers, makes sense, and in blurring the lines
between retail and entertainment even further, the project brought together
three disparate entities for the first time.
Jim Haslett, vice president of operations and a partner in Pearlmart Shoprite,
a chain of New Jersey supermarkets, was the catalyst, looking to put something
interactively entertaining in the company's new store in Jackson. He saw a picture
in a magazine about a talking tree, thought about doing a Keebler Elf tree,
then decided to do a Pearlmart Shoprite original. The store's interior designer,
after some research, contacted Giovanni Calabrese, the owner of Custom Creations
in Weehawken, New Jersey.
Calabrese started his career in visual merchandising, doing displays for department
stores and a high-end supermarket in New York City. He has also done work for
movies and the television series "The Sopranos," and a couple of years ago brought
his sculpturing skills to the theming side of the amusement industry. It happened
that just when Pearlmart Shoprite contacted him Calabrese had built a tree for
last November's IAAPA Trade Show, where he won Best New Product honorable mention
for Displays and Sets for his theming of a tower ride at Funtown Splashtown
U.S.A.in Saco, Maine (THE
LOOP, May 4, 2001). He also had already done a rudimentary talking tree
for the Weehawken Public Library. Both of these helped secure the deal for Custom
Creations.
Despite his experience with store displays, Calabrese was curious about the
notion of putting an animatronic character in a supermarket. "I've never seen
anything like that in a supermarket," he said. "The way they set it up, it's
just an entertaining thing. Theming is a definite key for that supermarket.
It's a great place." In addition
to the tree, Pearlmart Shoprite commissioned Custom Creations to build a faux
hot air balloon rising through the ceiling above the florist shop.
For the tree, which he built with carved foam and a hot plastic coating, Calabrese
contracted with Gilderfluke & Co., of Burbank, California, to provide the animatronic
programming. Such a venue was not new for Gilderfluke; some of the company's
early-generation control systems provided the thunder and lightning that signals
a pending rain showering vegetables in produce departments.
"We're doing a lot of controls for other applications other than the entertainment
industry," said Dru Smith, Gilderfluke's technical salesman. That breadth ranges
from Hollywood movies to airport information kiosks. Nevertheless, Smith said
he was intrigued by the animatronic tree in a supermarket. "The ultimate destination
of our equipment doesn't matter to us much," he said. "Gio said he was building
a tree and told me what he wanted to do with it. I gave him pointers on building
the animation. I had no idea this was going to a supermarket. I can see something
like this being a really cool advertising product."
From the time it signed the contract Custom Creations had only two months to
sculpt and install both the tree and balloon. Even as the store, two days before
opening to the public, was entertaining vendors and staff with a pre-opening
party, Calabrese was doing some final pruning and tuning. "I was watching the
food trays going by saying, 'I hope you save some for us,'" He said. "He finished
the tree up and had a couple of sandwiches," Haslett said. "He was a lot of
fun, a great guy. He's a real piece of work."
So was his tree, Haslett said. "We're happy with Giovanni, we're happy with
the tree, we're happy with the balloon. But people don't notice the balloon;
they're looking at the tree instead." Meanwhile, Calabrese plans to retrofit
the library tree with a Gilderfluke animation program. And, he takes a different
approach to food shopping. "I've been in other supermarkets around here that
have absolutely nothing, and it starts the wheels going in my head: 'Hey, I
should suggest something.'"
