Designated shopper - retail needs to offer unconventional shopping experiences

Brandweek, June 8, 1998 by Laura Shanahan

So I'm channel-surfing after the Seinfeld finale and there on the Home Shopping Network is Al ("Don't call me Soup Nazi!") Yeganeh hawking the product from his "as-seen-on-TV" storefront. Yeah, Seinfeld dissed me, but here, buy some soup by 800 number. Now, in all fairness to the World's Greatest Soup Man (identified as such on the T-shirts he's also selling, for $24.95), his operation was famous long before Jerry started riffing on it; indeed, it was precisely because it afforded such a singularly authentic experience that it was plucked from the local chorus line to star on a much-talked-up episode of the No.

1 show in the country. "Soup, schmoup," one would-be patron told a TV crew while on the ever-lengthening line to Yeganeh's Soup Kitchen International. "I'm here for the experience." That's it in a nutshell. As the mailing of America continues inexorably onward, when it is, in the immortal words of Canned Heat, the same all over from the Gap to Staples to Planet Hollywood, we hunger to feel something real. Not that there isn't much to be said for standardization, uniformity and predictability, particularly in pharmacies and office-supply stores, but these same qualities that may fill our needs don't satisfy our soul. In a society where you can literally just phone it in (even McDonald's now takes fax orders), we increasingly respond to stores that serve up the possibility of surprise, serendipity and unscripted social interaction. Give us fun, free-wheeling ways and the frisson of perhaps a hint of danger. Yeganeh supplies all of the above. Might he "go postal" one day, and lunge over the counter at a customer? Will we thrill to a Jerry Springer-type spectacle of restless standees duking it out? ("Quit shoving!" "You shoved me, ho!") What will the soups of the day be? The possibilities for life-enrichment, not to mention a source of stories for the gang at the water-cooler or the folks back home, are endless. "I love the Jewish delis," says my friend Jock, who, despite having lived for years in San Francisco and New York, continues to betray his continental Church-of-England roots by stating such redundancies as "Jewish deli." "No one ever comes to your table, strikes a pose and says, 'My name is Moishe and I'll be your waiter this evening.'" Jock likes it when the countermen bark at him, and loves it when the waitresses flirt. "They call me 'Hon,'" he beams with boyish delight--and beams of boyish delight are not easy to coax out of stately steel-haired sixtysomething men. While Jock adores delis for their departure from the scripted service he's received in more standardized establishments, he also relishes the peek they allow into another "real" culture--indeed, it seems that a window into the exotic is an especially compelling lure. Conversely, the more homogenized and home-grown a store--well, let's just say familiarity can breed contempt. Not to strike a Seinfeld leitmotif here, but please refer to the recent episode in which Elaine thinks her boyfriend is African-American, he assumes she's Hispanic, and when they both find out they're just plain ol' white folks, the dispirited Elaine asks the only appropriate question: "Wanna go to the Gap?" The Body Shop is more exotically veneered, but it's no less standardized and predictable, with its trendy new hemp soap. Once Hollywood types started blathering about hemp clothes and supermarkets now carry hemp beer, you knew this was coming. I go to a one-of-a-kind store called Bath Island, where I get a soap called Soaprize!, which has--surprise!--a toy spider, or other creepy-crawly, embedded in its glycerine core. So what if it's for 6-year-olds. Sensing our need for excitement and authenticity, increasing numbers of establishments think they can fill the bill with canned experiences. Eateries are among the worst offenders. There's a place called the Brooklyn Diner in midtown Manhattan. Tip: Take the subway to Brooklyn and go to a diner there. As for the new "S&M" restaurant where (predictably) leather-clad, whip-wielding waiters serve food in dog bowls--could the lash of the whip possibly rival the sting of "No soup for you!" from a real master?