Getting to the "cart" of the Matter

Grocery Headquarters
May, 2003

Shopping carts have been called a necessary evil by both retailers and consumers. However, improvements to the carts are making them easier to handle.

Let’s face it—shopping carts are a fact of supermarket life that retailers hate to deal with and customers can’t live without. Yet, without an adequate fleet of well-maintained carts, the store will soon cease to have an adequate number of patrons.

The good news is that there have recently been improvements to the carts themselves and to the retailer’s ability to keep them secure and available for shoppers to use.

Supercart has re-engineered its cart products with four areas in mind: safety, capacity utilization, maintenance and corporate branding. These are the areas that retailers say they have the most potential problems with in their cart fleets.

“ I strongly believe that this [shopping cart] is a strategic asset to the store,” says Martin Deale, president and CEO of Wellesley Hills, Mass.-based Supercart. “There’s a direct correlation between availability of good serviceable shopping carts and sales. We’re making sure that when somebody takes a shopping cart it’s not a necessary evil, it’s actually a great shopping experience.”

In terms of safety, Supercart has designed a number of safety features into its carts, most of which have to do with safeguarding small children. The new Supercart carts have an attachment on the back gate that allows parents to hook infant car seats directly onto the back gate, instead of having them perched on the top of the basket. This placement is safer for the child and frees up room in the cart that would have been taken up by the infant seat. Deale says that 70% of the carts on the market are able to be hooked safely on the back gate.

Over the years, a big problem with carts has been their tendency for rear tipping. This is especially dangerous when a small child is sitting in the seat and the parent leans on the handle. Supercart’s large cart has been independently tested to withstand 350 pounds to 400 pounds of pressure exerted on the handle without rear tipping.

“ I’ve invented a new type of seat belt,” says Deale. “It’s a harness that comes over the shoulders and clips between the child’s legs like a standard seat harness. But what is special about this one is that you can unhook the two straps coming over the shoulder and then use them as a seat belt for an older child.”

With the advent of club-size packages of paper towels, soft drinks or large bags of dog food, cart manufacturers are placing more emphasis on the bottom of the cart. Instead of keeping open space between the wheels, most cart manufacturers have installed trays or shelves to hold oversized products. According to Deale, research now shows that despite industry efforts to give consumers more ease of shopping for bulky items, 90% of shoppers do not use the bottom of a cart. In order to put more space inside the basket, Supercart has increased the basket capacity of its large carts by 10% and decreased the space between the basket and the bottom tray. However, the tray still has ample room for bulk packages. The company has also added a hook to the back gate for the shopper to hang handbags, coats and bags of produce.

Deale also claims to have eliminated the broken wheel problem that carts are susceptible to by giving his carts the ability to have their back wheels lifted slightly off the ground when they are nested to prevent wear and tear.

Broken wheels, bent carts and stolen carts take a tremendous toll on operators. It is estimated that each year retailers spend about $800 million in replacing lost, stolen or broken carts, or in replacing cart parts.

“ Every time a shopping cart is stolen from a supermarket’s parking lot, the retailer is faced with two problems,” says Kirk Bowman, director of sales for North America, for San Diego-based Carttronics LLC. “There are fewer carts available for their customers. Without carts being available, the size of the average purchase goes down. So, in order to replace a lost shopping cart, the retailer has to sell several hundred dollars worth of groceries.”

Carttronics makes the Cart Anti-Theft Protection System (CAPS) cart containment system. CAPS works by sending low-frequency radio waves from an antenna buried along the perimeter of the parking lot. When a cart crosses the boundary, the antenna triggers a little yellow shell that deploys out of a wheel. The shell prevents the cart from being pushed, but does not ruin the wheel. If the shell is broken, it can be replaced for about $6.

At this year’s FMI show, Carttronics will be unveiling its Cadet, an anti-theft cart product. This extension of the CAPS system is focused on preventing “push-out” theft inside the store. When someone loads up a shopping cart and tries to quickly push it out the front door without going through the checkouts, Cadet triggers a wheel cover to come down and prevent the cart from being moved. The system works by having the cart receive two radio frequencies. When a cart is brought into the store, it receives the first signal, which will trigger the wheel cover when the cart passes through the front door again. However, when the cart goes through the checkout, another signal decodes the system and allows the cart to leave the store. The system is just now going into a few stores for a pilot test.

GS1 system from Irvine, Calif.-based Gatekeeper Systems is another cart containment system. The system uses an antenna cable that is embedded in the parking lot to send a signal to the cart’s wheel. A signal receiver in one specially designed wheel on each cart will prevent the cart from crossing the perimeter boundary. A handheld cart key allows the wheel to be released by an authorized staff member.

Kart Saver Inc., based in Sacramento, Calif., prevents cart theft by attaching a K-2000 retention unit under the left front wheel of the cart. As the cart nears the perimeter of the parking lot, the unit signals the shopper that the wheel is about to become locked. If the alarm is ignored, the caster is locked at an angle that will only allow the cart to move in a circle if it is pushed. The K-2000 unit receives its signal from a central transmitter located in the store.

Round ‘em up
Although electric cart retrieval units have been around the supermarket for quite some time, it appears that their popularity is on the rise. “We see a much more rapid adoption of mechanization of cart retrieval,” says Dan Johnson, president of Plymouth, Minn.-based Dane Technologies, the maker of the QuicKart 4000 and the smaller QuicKart 2000 retrieval systems. “We’re seeing very fast growth with a number of industry leaders, including Tesco and Wal-Mart. There are three basic reasons why retailers are looking at mechanized cart retrieval: to reduce the risk of injury to workers, as a significant labor reduction tool and to achieve faster cycles times on the carts.” Johnson believes that the typical supermarket can save about 40 man hours a week by using a retrieval device.

“ By having faster cycle times, you don’t need as many carts in reserve,” says Johnson. “If you can reduce that peak cart inventory that you might need for a Saturday or at holiday time by 10%, a retailer can save 50 carts. At an average of $100 per cart—that’s a savings of $5,000.”

Carts specially designed for children are becoming much more popular with supermarket management. “We found that the kid’s carts have really taken off during the last couple of years,” says Andy Cremer, product manager, for Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based RTC Industries Inc. “There’s a study that indicated that parents spend 10% to 40% more when kids are with them and happy while they’re shopping. So, what we’re trying to do is capitalize on that and provide something that is a win-win situation for shoppers and retailers.”

RTC has developed a kid’s cart called the iZoom, which is an integrated cart where the kids ride in the front and there’s a full cart integrated into the back. The kid’s compartment is enclosed on the top and front, and has safety arms on the sides. The kids get to “steer” the carts because they have steering wheels and horns, and even cup holders.

According to Cremer, the carts are a wonderful way for the retailer to brand his operation. It is also a way for manufacturers to help the retailer brand the store by supplying the carts with their logo and/or the retailer’s.

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