BY THE NUMBERS
187,000: square feet of shopping at Jungle Jim’s Fairfield
80,000: amount of customers who shop Jungle Jim’s Fairfield weekly
215,000: square feet of shopping at Jungle Jim’s Eastgate
100,000: amount of customers projected to shop Jungle Jim’s Eastgate weekly
450: employees at Jungle Jim’s Eastgate
26: total tenants
250-300: employees for tenants
3: total videos shown in store
Jungle Jim’s International Market opened its Eastgate location Tuesday, but store officials say it’s still a work in progress.
“We’re not done,” said Phill Adams, Jungle Jim’s director of development. “It’s like Fairfield. We’ve got to have some more room to play.”
Located at 4450 Eastgate South Drive near Interstate 275 and Ohio 32, the 215,00-square-foot store features color-coded ceilings to help shoppers navigate every department and an entirely different layout than the 187,000-square-foot Fairfield location.
The seafood section’s 40-foot 1960 Owens watercraft is named “Norma Lee” in memory of Norma Lee Sarosy, a long-time Jungle Jim’s Fairfield head cashier who died in 2010.
A 1963 Bambi Airstream trailer sits atop the natural foods department and a 1942 U.S. Navy Seagrave fire truck recovered from a Mason museum is parked by the hot sauce section.
A 60-foot-long “hot sauce drone” fashioned from parts of a DC-8 jet airplane hovers nearby, while a bee hive ride rescued from Americana amusement park revolves above the honey, jam and jelly display.
Red castle spires from Kings Island and a Jelly Belly PT Cruiser mark the candy section and a pirate ship salvaged from a Las Vegas casino is a landmark for the Caribbean foods section.
A “secret entrance” in the back offers a checkout area for purchases of 20 items or less and provides instant access to the wine and beer section, which is twice as large of the Fairfield location, plus an 800-square-foot cigar humidor three times as large as the one in Fairfield.
A 5,000-square-foot liquor department will be added before Christmas, Adams said.
Shoppers can sample 12 different kinds of beer on draught at the Tasting Bar. A 7,155-pound piece of cheese is on display at the nearby cheese shop.
“Our Big Cheese was born on 11/9/2011 and will continue to age here in our cooler as we ‘cut the cheese’ for you to enjoy,” reads a sign outside the display.
“You should see the crackers that go with this,” Adams said and smiled.
There’s even an extensive assortment of hookah smoking devices inside the store’s international foods department, which is 5,000 square feet larger than the Fairfield location.
The new Eastgate location is part of a 420,000-square-foot shopping plaza with 26 tenants, a mix of old, new and yet to be opened.
Shops just inside the “Foodie Entrance” include Caribou Coffee, General Electric Credit Union, Colonel De Gourmet Herbs & Spices, Smoothie-Licious and Sushi.
“Jungle” Jim Bonaminio, who started the Fairfield location as a produce stand in 1974, said that he likes the new store because he was able to “play around” from the start.
“I got to use my imagination on a lot of different things,” he said.
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