21 hours Ago By [email protected] (Lindsey Reynolds)
You might not think of Ohio as the setting for the most unique shopping experience in the country, but this ain't no flyover state. Nestled in Fairfield, Ohio, Jungle Jim's International Market is not your . At more than 200,000 square feet, it's part supermarket, part amusement park, and part visual spectacle.
Among the smorgasburg of international foods and hard-to-find ingredients lies one of Jungle Jim's most unique features: its quirky, larger-than-life animatronics. Wandering throughout the myriad aisles, animatronic figures delight (or sometimes terrify) shoppers as they move, sing, and interact in their own delightful, robotic ways. From a rock-and-roll Elvis lion crooning to customers near the candy aisle to a singing Campbell's soup can swinging above canned goods, these mechanical marvels are probably the last thing you'd expect to see in a .
But Jungle Jim's is no ordinary store, and the owner, James "Jungle Jim" Bonaminio, is no ordinary businessman. He began as a humble road-side produce seller in 1971, selling watermelons and potatoes at dirt cheap prices. After jumping around from vacant lot to vacant lot, he was finally able to open a real storefront, air conditioning and all, in 1975.
But that was just the beginning. By the late 1980s, Bonaminio had slowly begun to build out his "jungle," adding palm trees, waterfalls, and fiberglass elephants and giraffes outside the entrance. When outsiders questioned the money his outlandish decor was costing, Jim simply explained that he wanted grocery shopping to be fun.
A theme park of food Jim Bonaminio's vision was a grocery store that would be as entertaining as it was practical. And for him, entertainment meant placing animatronic figures (often upcycled) throughout the store, regaling shoppers as they moved, sung, and interacted in various weird ways. The giant lion dressed as Elvis that croons "Hound Dog" next to a Jelly Belly display is actually a rescue from an old .
Above the seafood section, a "cereal bowl band" features the Lucky Charms' leprechaun on guitar, Honey Nut Cheerios' bee on drums, and the Twix rabbit on keyboard. For some reason, they only play doowop tunes. A larger-than-life Marilyn Monroe hovers over the wine section, while a working monorail delivers customers to the bourbon bar and event center.
Some of these larger-than-life installations have a clear food-related theme, but others are delightfully random. Above the bourbon bar is a repurposed, revolving dry cleaning rack while a real, decommissioned firetruck sits on top of 1500+ hot sauces. An entire Sherwood Forest scene is on aisle 25, where Robin Hood merrily, if jerkily, laughs and welcomes you to Jungle Jim's.
The surreal experience is so much more than just one big expensive gimmick, though. Bonaminio's overall goal, besides having fun, is that he wants Jungle Jim's to be a destination, not just a grocery store. Considering 80,000 shoppers visit each week, and his annual sales are more than $90 million, it's clear his gimmicks have worked.
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