June 23, 2026
“Schnucks grocery store has just implemented a new plan to play classical music in their parking lot in Hampton Village to discourage loitering.”
—St. Louis KSDK Channel 5 News
GRAFTON TOWNSHIP—Sally Fleming, a regular evening shopper, said she had always preferred making her grocery runs shortly before closing. The aisles were quieter, the shelves were still reasonably stocked, and the produce, though delivered earlier in the day, was fresh enough for dinner.
Her supermarket of choice was GroHappy, a store located in a mall about three minutes from her home. Inside, the chain had long cultivated a reputation for an unusually curated soundtrack: Instead of standard light rock, each aisle featured music matched to the products on display.
In the produce section, shoppers might hear “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Nearby selections included “Garlic, Good Garlic,” from Luciano Berio’s Coro, and Alison Krauss’s “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn.”
The butcher counter featured such fare as Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and Johann Strauss’s “Wiener Bonbons,” the latter occasionally carrying over into the candy section, where Saint-Saëns’s “Wedding Cake” was also in rotation. Seafood shoppers could be nudged toward trout by Schubert’s “Die Forelle” or toward sushi by Harry Styles’s “Music for a Sushi Restaurant.”
Sally said she enjoyed guessing the musical pairings as she made her way through the store, even when her shopping cart drifted left. Checkout, she noted, often included Toni Basil’s “Shoppin’ from A to Z,” a detail that reliably made her laugh.
But shortly before 9 p.m. on a warm June evening, Fleming said the atmosphere outside the store changed dramatically. As GroHappy prepared to close, the parking lot—usually occupied only by a few lingering teenagers and departing employees—filled with the amplified strains of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” blaring from the loudspeakers.
This selection was followed by the final three minutes of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Fleming said she looked upward, half expecting helicopters. “It was not July Fourth,” she later observed, “so I had no clue why this was happening.”
Sally approached store manager Barry Garten, who was locking the doors, and asked what was going on.
Garten said the store had grown concerned about after-hours loitering and was trying a new deterrent. “Too damn many hoodlums out there with their rap, hip-hop, and Andrew Lloyd Webber,” he said. “We needed to find music that would get them out of here.”
Fleming questioned whether the plan might have the opposite effect. At the volume being used, she suggested, the music seemed more likely to attract attention than disperse anyone.
Barry defended the policy. “It is proven that classical music tends to drive people away,” he said. “No one told us which pieces would accomplish that.”
A devotee of the genre, Fleming began offering suggestions.
She proposed the “Danse sacrale” from The Rite of Spring.
Barry rejected the idea, saying loiterers would simply spend the night trying to count the rhythms.
She then suggested the last movement of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony.
“We would still have two violinists left,” Barry replied.
Fleming’s next recommendation was Beethoven’s “Les Adieux” Sonata.
That, too, was dismissed. Barry said piano music would only put people to sleep, requiring extra staff to wake them and send them home.
As the discussion continued—with Khachaturian’s Third Symphony blasting away in the background—another group of customers gathered at the east end of the parking lot. An impromptu rendition of “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana broke out. Moments later, an inebriated group of shoppers began singing the “Brindisi” from La Traviata, demanding that the liquor department remain open 24 hours.
By then, witnesses said, the policy appeared to be having precisely the opposite effect from what management intended. Fleming concluded that the only viable solution was not louder selections but duller music.
With the approval of the GroHappy Board of Directors, the store adopted a revised closing-time policy: every evening, as the doors shut, the parking lot would hear the one classical piece everyone seemed to know but few could endure indefinitely—an endless loop of Pachelbel’s Canon.
Whether the new soundtrack will discourage loitering or merely inspire spontaneous weddings remains to be seen. For Fleming, however, the immediate benefit was clear: She could get to her car, put away her groceries, and preserve what remained of her sanity.