When The Meat Market Becomes The Meet Market

The good folks at Tres Sugar (pronounced tray shoo-gar) want you to know that grocery stores are phenomenal places at which to meet other singles. Evidently, some Safeway in San Francisco is the best pickup spot in town. Read: Grocery Store Romance Gets Shelved

"Sure, that's great," you say, "but what about the Chinese?" Funny you should ask. Tres Sugar breaks down a little-known story regarding an effort by a Chinese grocer to get people together. Despite the massive shortage of women due to the one-child policy, some Chinese ladies are having a hard time finding single, eligible and worthwhile dudes. So the grocery store charges a few shekels and collects the same info a dating site might. From there, they let the magic happen, and dozens of couples have since gotten together. Read: 7 Surprisingly Good Places To Meet Someone

It’s long been argued that the grocery store is a good place to meet someone, but how do you break the ice? You run into the same approach problem at Kroger (or Weggy’s) as you would anywhere else and, frankly, people are much less tolerant of tipsy shoppers than tipsy bar patrons. My man Chance (TakeAChance.tv) does very well for himself and has a great advice for ladies on the prowl, he regularly tells ladies to try dropping fruit and vegetables, in the hopes that a chivalrous dude will pick them up. Before you guffaw, my buddy Lost Plum has used this technique to great effect. This would make for a great episode of 10 Items Or Less, and by "great" I mean almost tolerable. Read: 6 Secret Places To Meet Men

Have you ever picked someone up at the market? What technique did you use? I think standing near the deli counter and making comments about how unimpressed you are by various phallic Italian meats is probably a bad way to go.