Placing the Cart First

Parking lots can be dangerous places for shopping carts-they can be stolen or damaged. But cart suppliers are taking some interesting steps to hold down retail costs.

by David Litwak
Grocery Headquarters
July 2002

Shopping carts were once considered no more than a wire basket on wheels, a convenience to be used then abandoned in the parking lot. Times have changed.

As carts themselves have gotten bigger, better engineered, stronger but lighter and are made from a variety of materials. There are now a myriad of accessories that can be applied to carts to give shoppers extra convenience, anything from calculators for adding up shopping bills to product location tracking devices and child restraints.

Carts pose logistical problems once they leave the store. When they are scattered around a supermarket lot, an employee has to round them up and find a place to store them. However, setting aside specific spaces in parking lots is becoming commonplace and technological improvements in cart corrals are helping alleviate stocking problems.

McCue Corp., base in Salem, Mass, for one, has re-engineered its cart corrals to make them more convenient for operators to set up. "In our Bumper Park Open Corral, we made some changes so that now it can be put together in just seven minutes," says Doug Perelli, the company's director of marketing. "We redesigned it so everything snaps together; there's no hardware or tools needed. The benefit is that the store can set it up themselves." Another improvement to the corral is that the parts are all universal.

Placing the corrals around the lot also enables shoppers to push the carts to a safe storage place, until they can be collected. The Bumber Park corrals, for example, come in several sizes, but the triple width will hold three rows of carts, with 11 carts in each row for a total of 33 carts. A back-to-back corral holds 66 carts in what amounts to two parking spaces.

One of the differences between our corral and others is that there's a plastic bumber on the side, so if a car door hits it, the door will bounce off the barrier and not get a ding or chip," says Perilli. "So, the retailer doesn't have the liability. Plus there's no ground frame; it's anchored across the top for stability. The elimination of the ground frame alleviates the tripping hazard, and lessens the potential damage to a car if it should hit the corral."

Shopping carts are also becoming more innovative and consumer-friendly. Last year, McCue introduced its Bean Cart, a combination shopping cart and child's riding car. After a year of operation, the company introduced some significant improvements to the cart, including a swing arm to prevent children from hanging outside the cart.

A removable bumber was added around the bottom of the cart to prevent damage. The cart itself was made to allow more head room to accommodate larger children and to allow two children to sit in it comfortably, while a third, smaller child could sit in the redesigned infant seat in the shopping basket.

Companies are also placing a big emphasis on helping retailers collect used carts in their parking lots. Supercart, the Wellesley Hills, Mass-based manufacturer of plastic shopping carts, recently introduced it's new full-size, interlocking cart. To prevent any resistance during movement, a Supercart is slid into a groove at the back of the cart so its back wheel is lifted ¼ inch off the ground. The company claims that a clerk can easily move and control a line of 35 to 40 full-size Supercarts.

"We spent years saying to retailers, 'what are your problems?'" says Supercart's President and CEO Martin Deale. "The perception of a shopping cart is negative; it's seen as a 'necessary evil.' Why should it be?"

Engineering improvements in the full-size Supercart include a larger basket, which now holds more than 11,000 cubic inches, a lowered center of gravity for better flexibility, increased overall strength, a load capacity of 600 pounds and safety and comfort adjustments for the child seat. According to Deale, parts are easily replaceable on the cart, which lowers maintenance costs and adds to the life of the cart.

Electric retrieval units have been running across supermarket lots for some time. Dane Technologies, based in Plymouth, Minn., has recently incorporated a number of quality control improvements into both its large riding QuicKart 4000 and the smaller walk-behind QuicKart 2000 models.

"The number that we're told by store managers is in the range of a 50% reduction in pure labor that is spent in the parking lot," says David Lecky, Dane's executive vice president. "One of the major retailers tested the units for a year in all of their stores, and found a 25% reduction in accident claims involving shopping carts in the parking lots of their stores."

Dane has developed a smaller version called Power Pals that help move heavy loads in the backrooms of retail stores and in warehouses.

For many supermarkets and other large retail stores, the biggest shoplifting problem occurs not with store merchandise, but with shopping carts. The cost of replacing a shopping cart is expensive, especially when many municipalities now have local ordinances that exact hefty fines for abandoned shopping carts.

"At $125 a cart, it's costing the industry a fortune," says Bernard Rogan, spokesman for Shaw's Supermarkets, based in West Bridgewater, Mass. "Nationwide, this loss or replacement of carriages can be attributed to over $800 million in losses to operators."

Some retailers have long erected barriers that prevent people from taking the carts past a small area right outside the store. However, the barriers are not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act that mandates accessibility for handicapped shoppers, aside from severely limiting customer convenience.

Loss prevention systems for shopping carts now concentrate on preventing carts from being rolled off the lots. Once the carts reach a predetermined distance from the store, a mechanical device physically prevents the cart from proceeding. There are two basic types of systems used to achieve this: one type of system works through infrared technology, while the other employs a wire buried under the parking lot's surface.

"Retailers are recognizing more that at some stores they do have a shopping cart theft problem, and more and more they recognize that they can get a return on investment by purchasing a shopping cart retention system," says Oscar Lizotte, vice president of sales and marketing at Kart Saver, based in Sacramento, Calif.

Kart Saver's system works by installing a K2000 retention unit right onto the left front caster of the cart. If a customer attempts to take a shopping cart off the property,an internal alarm warns the shopper that the unit is about to lock up. The unit then fastens the caster at an angle, which will only allow the cart to go around in a circle, until the cart stops moving. The infrared signal is transmitted from a central unit in the store.

CAPS (Cart Anti-Theft Protection System) from Carttronics, based in San Diego, uses a low-frequency transmitter to send radio waves through a cable buried to send radio waves through a cable buried along the lot's perimeter. The cable antenna is installed one inch deep in a saw-cut trench. When a cart goes over a trench, the antenna triggers an electronic caster shell to come down over the wheel where it locks in place to stop the cart. The system also includes perimeter striping and signage on the pavement at the lot's exits to warn and educate shoppers.

The system was installed at a Shaw's Star Market store near Boston's Fenway Park in 2001. About 200 carts were outfitted with the system and cart loss was practically eliminated from the location. Rogan says that using the system has even reduced the overall number of carts needed by the store.

"As a result of the CAPS system, we have been able to redirect resources previously dedicated to retrieving carts to activities that actually help us sell more products to shoppers," says Tom Farello, Shaw's senior vice president of retail operations. Shaw's plans to install the CAPS system in six of its busiest urban locations.

Kart Saver has also introduced K-Check, which uses new technology to monitor the bottom shelf of shopping carts. This detection system works by using an infrared unit on the bottom shelf to communicate with a receiver in the checkout lane, warning the cashier that there is something under the basket.

An audible alarm goes off when the system detects an object on the bottom shelf and a warning flashes on the cashier's screen. When the customer takes the product off the bottom shelf and places it on the check stand, the alarm goes off. If the product is too big to move, such as a 40 pound bag of dog food, the cashier can manually turn off the alarm.

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