Jungle Jim's Recyling Program

So you ask.... "What could Jungle Jim's Possibly recycle?"
OMG... where do I start!?

Number One on the list has to be our Monorail. In it's previous Life.... Wild Animal Habitat and Lion Country Safari at Kings Island in Mason Ohio.

Grocery Carts: IPT Brand carts are made from recycled plastics.
Cardboard: Like most stores, we recycle cardboard.
Pallets: a pallet is the wood or plastic base that the food and equipment arrive on. The plastic pallets are returned to the delivery company. The wood pallets are exchanged with the drivers or picked up by a pallet recycle company.

Building Materials: If you look around the store, you can spot a variety of items we have "recycled".

* Wine Department - venture deep into the wine department. You will find a nice collection of lay down wines. Look at the base the bottles are displayed. The wood surrounding the base is made from old delivery boxes. The bumper on the front of the display was old chair rails. the holder the bottles are laying in... same chair rail flipped over. Now look at the wine cellar. The brick wall was part of an old factory in Hamilton, Ohio. The wood upright display, by the award winning port o let bathrooms, used to be tractor trailer floors. :) The port o lets are made from recycled plastic. The fencing around the beer and wine registers are recycled.

* Riedel Glass display: Old building beams and sliding glass doors....

* Cigar Humidor: The windows and doors came from the old Performance Honda offices. The wood beams, same building the bricks came from.

* Liquor Store: The glass display counters are from Kings Island.

* Party Sign: Old Party City Stores sign.

* Cheese Shop: Every refrigerated Display case was recycled from another store. Completely restored, painted and cleaned for use in our store. The service cases in the cheese shop are from the old Cincinnati Dayton Road Thriftway.

* Deli: Same as the cheese shop. Every case was purchased from another store. The Boar's Head truck above the Deli was reconditioned and mounted above the deli.

* Olive Bar: Every case has been used outside of our store and restored. The beams are from the historic building mentioned above.
* Registers: Every check stand was a recycle from another grocery store. A little work, a little paint and we have nice functional check stands.
* Elvis: Elvis was retired from a famous pizzaria. Jungle brought him out of retirement to entertain thousands and thousand of guests a week. (make sure you make a collectable penny while singing along with Elvis)
* The U.S.S. Minnow: Yes, the big boat in Seafood. What a gem! Jungle found her in Florida sitting in a bog with no hope of sailing the high seas. Jungle purchased her and moved her north to our store. The expansion in 1992 was built around the Minnow. The boat is now our seafood managers office, the sound system for all the animatronics.

* Jasmin: Bricks, beams, and some fixtures are recycled. If you look at the glass display holders, you will notice all the metal pieces and if you look really close, you will notice the glass shelves are old windows.

* Outside of Jasmin: Bricks and cobblestone. The cobblestone was once a road in downtown Cincinnati (Now called Pete Rose Way)

* Kraft Nascar Car above entrance: from the movie "Days of Thunder" Yes, we have all the cars in storage for something... someday. :)

* On the outside of the greenhouse and other portions of the entrance. Wood blocks are installed like bricks. The blocks were guardrail blocks. The state of Tennessee changed the specs for the transition block. When you build guardrails you have the post that goes in the ground. At the top left side of the post you install the transition block and the guardrail on the outside. A bolt goes through the metal rail, transition block, post and secured with a large galvanized nut. We used the transition blocks throughout the building.

* The two "Shade Screens" outside of the greenhouse are recycled from downtown Cincinnati. They were the Metro bus stops in downtown Cincinnati.

* The little "house" on the outside of Shasta was Tupperware trade show piece.

* Inside Shasta the walls on the left side. If you look closesly, the wood is about 3 inches in width. The wood from the original building was saved for years. We recycled it into this shop. The carpenters added beautiful features with the wood. look for the wonderful designs.

* The drop ceiling (orange) was old pallet racking.

* The gift basket order station was International Paper's trade show equipment.

* The Changing room is 100% recycle... Check out the shower head. LOL.

* The jewelry case... an old deli case. Ice cold jewelry and diamonds. LOL.
* The curved brown display case against the back wall was another recycled piece from International Paper.

* a lot of the display fixtures are antiques folks have donated over the years. Some of the tables and benches are from Kings Island. (remember the pizza and food building on the left when you enter the park?)

* The cart corrals (with green roof, we have 3) were built with beams from another old building. No worries, they were supplemented with Steel and sprinklers.

* Wood barrel trash cans: old whiskey barrels.

* The water scene was created with recycled products and recycled plastic animals. (the ducks are real)

Pre Heat Water: unlike most stores, we pre-heat the water before it enters the hot water tanks. Tim Carrigann deserves credit for this. Tim was our plumber who also ran a dairy farm. In the dairy industry they recovered heat by using Mueller Free Heaters. Tim connected our compressors (refrigeration) to the pre-heaters. Thus, preheating the cold water prior hitting the hot water tanks. I ran into the Meuller folks at a trade show recently and found out they are integrating their products into the grocery industry. We were twenty years ahead of the industry. Good Job Tim.

I will update this posting periodically.

Have Fun!

The Serpent - not Puff the Magic Dragon

Click on the Photos... You have to admit, He's really Cool!

The serpent arrived around mid 1997. He "slept" in our warehouse for years until we found a home for him. His home was created when we moved our rear entrance / exit over to match Fairfield High Schools new bus entrance.

He was originally designed to be part of an aquarium. And the story goes.... the designer forgot about him until the truck arrived.... LOL I kid you not. How could someone forget this little guy?! He's so cute!

His original colors were scary. We put a lot of time and effort trying to remove that scary look.


I've noticed a lot of people posting pics of the serpent on the web. That's cool!

Jeanine of Fairfield sent pictures of him after one of our ice Storms
Thanks Jeanine!

Have Fun!
Phill

Directions to the Store


View Larger Map

Map to Jungle Jim's International Market

Need Driving directions to Jungle Jim's?

I have a link to a google map. When you open the link look to the left side of the screen. All of our tenants are listed. If you turn on the satellite view you can zoom into the store. Google has added street view to this map. click on the little yellow man in left top side of map to see the street view of the store.

Click Here to Visit the Map

Since Ikea and Bass Pro show up in a lot of blogs with Jungle Jim's, I've added their location to this map as well.

Have Fun!
Phill

Port O Lets

Wow! Who would have thought bathrooms could create that much excitement?!!
While designing the current wine shop, Jungle mentioned making them port o lets. It took us a bit of time to understand what his thought was. Once we understood and put it on the drawing it was hilarious. We talked about the looks and comments from customers. Little did we know how many looks and comments we would get from customers. LOL !
The port o lets really go back to Jungle's stand located at Erie & High. He didn't have a building with a shower so he created a wood box similar to an outhouse for his shower.

After construction and preparing to open to the public the health inspector and fire marshal both had to approve the expansion. Both were stunned and hesitated when we approached the bathrooms. Opening with temporary port o lets wasn't going to fly. LOL Even trying to convince them that we would have Rumpke service the port o lets daily wasn't getting us anywhere. LOL All was well once they opened the doors to the beautiful restrooms. :)

We designed them using the port o let that was on the job site. We quickly realized the standard Port O Let wouldn't work. The doors are narrow and short. A few phone calls cleared our minds. We can order the wheelchair accessible shells. YES! problem solved. LOL

I placed the phone call to the Port O Let manufacturer. The woman that took the call was not amused by our humor. I have to give it to her though, she understood the concept and shipped our order in pieces rather than a built unit. That saved a lot of time. Plus the contractors were able to add "Port O Let" builder to their resume. Our contractors experience a lot more building for us. Some of them love new challenges, others are shooting nails at us from the power nailer. LOL

After a year of excitement and watching people stand in front of the bathrooms waiting for someone to come out (LOL) we decided to add a sign in the store declaring ourselves as the winner by the "National Lavatory Association; LVA". Of course there is no LVA. And of course we didn't know about the national contest that Cintas holds.

Someone must have added our store to the list of restrooms for 2007. Someone from Cintas called and told Beth in Marketing that we were nominated as one of the five best restrooms in America. Of course I thought it was a prank call. LOL Once we visited thier website and realized it was for real, we informed Jungle. He thought it was a joke as well, but we convinced him otherwise.

Channel 19; WXIX arrived moments later to do the interview. Jungle wasn't available so Beth and I did the segment. That was a riot. Jungle made it to the last few minutes of the interview. Little did we know how significant that interview would be. The next day I was receiving google alerts and phone calls from people across the country. Our story had gone national. LOL. Of all things in the building we were going to be know for the restrooms.

Jungle likes contests and doesn't like to lose. During the online voting period we ran tv and radio commercials, passed out fliers and asked customers to vote for our port o lets.
About a month later Cintas arrived with the plaque! Best Restroom in America. That was awesome. Again national news. Even my "girlfriend" Robin Meade on CNN had our video. Jungle was live on national and international shows. Who would believe that the BBC would do a live interview with Jungle because of our restroom?!

Today, the port o lets stand proud in the fine wine shop with the plaque of Best Restroom. Chris; Jungle's son came up with the idea of turning the center port o let into a photo opportunity. The door was removed and the "throne" was created. Feel free to take your picture standing in the Best Restoom in America
LOL

Have Fun!
Phill