One born every minute
So I’m in the big Sainsbury’s in Portslade this morning picking up a few bits. As you walk through the bread and cakes section, there is a gorgeous warm waft of the sweet-spicy smell of hot cross buns. The bakery is pumping the aroma from the ovens into the air conditioning system. As you walk under each vent in the ceiling another blast hits you.
It’s much the same psychology, I suppose, as the one that dictates you should put a pot of coffee on just before a prospective buyer comes to view your house. A comforting aroma helps create an atmosphere more conducive to purchasing.
The cynical inventiveness of the application of this psychology to the marketing of food is amazing, however. Some misanthropic master of manipulation had the original idea. His ravening colleagues laughed and high-fived at the idea’s fiendish simplicity. The designer of the store and its systems had to arrange the air conditioning just so. All to sell baked goods, in this case, hot cross buns. The time, planning and money behind this swaying of the weak-minded borders on the sinister.
I bought two packets. They were lovely.
Posted on March 7th, 2006 at 10:38 am
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I hate to disappoint you, Justin, but I doubt those were smells coming from the bakery. A friend of mine had a brother whose job used to be producing chemically appealing bread smells to be pumped out for precisely that purpose.
Am agreement with Ken on this one. Subway is the worst for that. Note how the smell NEVER changes. That’s when things begin to get sinister.
The fiendish fiends. That’s even more satanic. Having read Fast Food Nation I should’ve known, really.
It was cleverly done, mind. The air coming out of the vents was pleasantly warm as if fresh from the ovens. Coming in, as I was, from the cold and before breakfast, I was ripe for the taking…
Smell of a good fry-up at the grease and spoon works wonders for me
But surely the smell needs to be created artficially? Imagine the fun if it wasn’t, and the spotty teen operating the oven sent the smell of incinerated raisins wafting around the store!
I heard that you’re supposed to bake a pie when showing a house. Of course, who has time to bake a pie nowadays? If I ever have property to sell, I’ll try the coffee approach.