I've been eagerly awaiting the opening of this new deli for some time now. I got especially excited when I started browsing facebook and saw so many great recommendations from future customers.
The wait is over - It's awful.
They've spent a small fortune on branding and admittedly the signage is rather stunning, yet the window itself, which is over twenty foot wide at a guess, has 5 soggy looking pumpkins and 12 dead leaves in it. It's not a display, it's a sign of worse to come.
Once inside the shop is huge, yet the fit-out seemed to consist of a visit to Ikea for some shelves and a quick call to 'The Bargain Hunters' to see if they have any junk left over from the last series.
I'm sorry but I don't want to hear radio 2 blaring at me and yes I would quite like a 'good morning' when I walk in. The food? Well I can buy half of it from my local supermarket at a better price and the other half I can find at just about every tired deli in the country.
In the world of TV and film they often talk about the fourth wall. This is the imaginary wall that separates the viewer from the actor. This wall should never be broken - unless your Hitchcock.
How does this relate to a deli? We as customers expect theatre and spectacle when we shop; leaving the anchovy fillets in the vacuum wrapped plastic, plus bar-code!, that they came off the white van with and then dumping them onto your chiller, the illusion is smashed. I now know where (and for how much) they buy the anchovies, the chorizo and the pasta. I should never see how a shop works.
This should all have been learnt on the first day of shop keepers school; maybe in De Beauvoir they skipped class to visit the graphic desingner!
