Saturday, August 29, 2009

Market Mischief


At City Market in Montrose yesterday one of those product hawkers was set up with a little stand near the meat department. He was pitching a product called Chef Michel, something like that.

His stand was nicely arranged with tiny cans and a bowl full of multi colored snack pieces. I was watching as a woman walked up, took a handful of the snack pieces and tossed them in her mouth.

Only then did he tell her, "Oh, this is dog food."

She hawked and squawked and spit it out. About a minute and a half later someone else came up and did the same thing.

You know this weirdo food guy was getting a kick out of it. I bet he got a kick out of the store too before the day was up. The product is made by Purina. I didn't try it.

10 comments:

Linda Davick said...

Oh for a hidden video camera!

Anonymous said...

Love this, truly love. Practiced timing, hatred of one's job, a little spite for greedy grabbers, oh the hell with it. Let them eat dog food.
Was it really? Why the snack set up? Are dogs eager to sample new dog food allowed in grocery stores?
Anyway, nice to imagine.

stray said...

This is wild!

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

That isweird to have dog food set up like food samples. What a cad!
A few years ago I visited a so. Cal farmers market where stand after stand offered samples of chopped fruit, nuts, or whatever snack was for sale. One stand sold packs of tiny carnivorous snails. If you let them loose in your yard, they'd eat the regular snails. Of course, he had a little tray of snails on display...
...you can guess what happened!

Mean Jean said...

I'm just mean enough to have spit it out ON HIM.

Sally said...

I was thinking about it later and it was just so weird that the food was out in the little sampler dish. Usually with pet food samples they're in little bags you can take home. There aren't DOGS wandering in the market. And plus there were no pictures of dogs, and the guy was wearing a chef's apron.

Namowal, are you saying you ate a carnivorous snail?

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

I wasn't the snail muncher.
I was chatting with the dealer and asked if grazers ever popped them in their mouth.
He said it happened at least once, but the guy spit it out after the first bite and kept walking!

Speaking of snail mix-ups, I had a friend who lived in the tropics who carelessly mistook a jumbo snail for a doorknob. Neither she nor the snail were happy when she grabbed it.

Jane said...

These exchanges are delightful reading.
I am wondering why the store
personnel let this strange guy
serve doggie treats as people
snacks. Maybe they actually hired him
to do it....

Sally said...

I think the problem may have started back at Purina with the product manager. Some smaller dog food companies have had great success with premium cans with names like Hobo Stew, Turducken, Thanksgiving Dinner, Cowboy Cookout. Some of them sound so good to a non vegetarian that you might consider cracking one open.

So Purina was probably trying to do something similar. The little cans on display were called "filet mignon flavor." (Which isn't the same as what the premiums do- theirs are actual content, not flavor.) But by using the Chef Michel name it suggests gourmet, and not showing dog pictures adds to the confusion.

More than what you wanted to read about dog food I'm sure!

RHSteeleOH said...

My daughter when she was growing up used to eat every sample available in the grocery store. I can just imagine her falling for this.