Love in the Aisles at Supermarkets

Love in the Aisles as Supermarket Dating Hits Paris
Reuters 9/15/03

PARIS (Reuters) - Supermarket dating, where singletons can check each other out via the contents of their trolleys, flirt while weighing vegetables and even walk down the aisles together, is coming to Paris.

Lafayette Gourmet, the food hall at the Galeries Lafayettes department store in Paris, is about to unleash the concept on the worldwide capital of romance.

Single shoppers will be identified on Thursday evenings by special purple shopping baskets decorated with a cartoon of a kissing couple, and offered a glass of champagne and a free photograph if they succeed in hooking up with a potential mate.

"We noticed that we have an evening clientele buying single portions of fresh food, so we decided the demand is there," Lafayette Gourmet Director Sylvain Gaudu told Reuters.

Paris, home to around 900,000 singles, many of whom are increasingly working hours as long as in London and New York, has already been introduced to speed dating and online dating.

The "dating market" shopping evenings, an idea imported from the Netherlands, will be jointly run from October 2 with Yahoo!, which already has an online dating service in France.

Once shoppers have made eyes at each other through the cereal packets or brushed past each other at the cheese counter, they will be able to chat each other up openly in the queue for a special checkout counter reserved for singletons.