SSupermarkets are a spectacle anyway. Just emotions at the checkout immediately after work! Stressed out, tortured by the day job, who complain in hissing tones when the cashier has to get up to check the price of bananas. Then the sticky floor, the smell of dropped beer in the corner with the drinks, maybe at some point it will be swept away, all the colors, the selection, the advertising, the brands. Everything is possible in the supermarket, at your fingertips. Why not love too?
At the four Edeka Schomacker branches in and around Bremen, customers in need of love have a chance for a romantic future. You can at least signal your readiness without saying a word with pink shopping baskets. Whoever takes such a basket instead of a regular basket at the entrance says: I'm looking. After a change, a date or after really big feelings – in any case, after further discussions with other customers, except for depressed, bewildered tourists, what kind of water is on the shelf without sparkling water.
Marko Jungnickel is a man who has at least brought dating back to real life in his business. “Who still needs Parship, Elitepartner, Tinder and Co.?” wrote Jungnickel customers at the entrance. And then you can be rejected, only in the best possible way – of course the joke had to be there. The managing director says that the idea for this did not come from an employee disappointed in dating apps, but rather from him. And that without any anecdote.
Originally only “very hesitant” was used.
“We were just thinking about what we could do for customers,” says Jungnickel. “It doesn't all have to be a huge story.” He didn't expect the media interest. “It's just a funny thought.” Supermarkets used to be meeting places, “there people knew each other, there people talked, there people had pleasant conversations.” Now everyone communicates offline much less often than online, and people rush through the supermarket or argue about what they want to eat in the evening. He wanted to give a little incentive against such sads. Of course, it's also great for his brand.
Jungnickel talks a lot about the “momentum” that triggered the basket activity. A dynamic he could not and would not stop. At first, the offer was used “very hesitantly”, then more and more customers used it. No complaints, “the feedback has been very positive.” He can only guess whether and how many customers will choose the pink baskets, regardless of their importance. He knows nothing of mishaps like misguided attempts at flirting. “I believe that if you specifically take this basket, you will be confident enough to say no.”
Other supermarkets set completely different standards
After three weeks of pink help, she hasn't heard of anyone falling in love or even getting engaged through the basket. “That would be too much to ask,” he says. “But if someone actually got to know each other through the baskets, of course that would be amazing.”
As we all know, that's life: how big the rolls you bake depends on who you compare yourself to. The CEOs and owners of some other supermarkets might look at Jungnickel's idea with envy. But the Bavarian market brought out the big guns weeks ago, even if it took some getting used to, and already assumed the condition was love.
The couple got married on February 29 of this year in Edeka, Neu-Ulm district. They had won a supermarket competition: a wedding worth 7,000 euros, including decorations, formal, dress, cake and so on, but between vegetables and cereals. Does Jungnickel want to go there too? “Well, we didn't set out to be a dating site,” she says, laughing. It is not yet clear how long he will give baskets. But if someone were to get married for their baskets – “that we will help support this wedding, that's clear”.