October 20, 2006
Town Calls for Crackdown on Runaway Carts
Many of the residents in communities around the Australian town of Redland have had it with shopping carts taken from store lots and dumped on the side of the road, near creeks and elsewhere marring the landscape.
One resident of nearby Ormiston, Lee Waters, went so far as to take photos of carts dumped in Ross Creek at Cleveland and send them to the Bayside Bulletin to make his point in print.
“It’s a disgrace,” he said.
The Deputy Mayor of Redland, Peter Dowling, said there was one practical solution to the problem and it could be found at Aldi.
The limited assortment grocery chain charges consumers to borrow carts from its stalls. When consumers return the carts, they get their money back. Anyone trying to move the cart off the store’s lots will find the wheels lock up at its perimeter.
Mr. Dowling said other retailers could also use a deposit system to allocate carts to shoppers. He recommended a $2 fee to make sure carts are returned.
“I’ve yet to see an Aldi trolley anywhere but Aldi,” he said.
Discussion Questions: What is the answer to put an end to wandering shopping carts? Does an Aldi-like system for allocating shopping carts make sense
for all retailers?
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Maybe something like a service person taking your groceries out to the car for you, and loading them into your auto then taking the cart back to the store.
How about having shoppers drive their car to the “loading curb,” where the friendly attendant loads your groceries into the trunk for you, while you smile and stay in the car. All you have to do is walk out to your car, drive to the loading curb, then on the way home with your groceries….
Why do we continue to fight with self service and carts strewn across the lot? Not the best last impression you have when you leave your local supermarket….
In addition to security deposits and the excellent customer-service approaches mentioned above, let’s add to the solution list: wheel lock systems, entrepreneurship, RFID tagging and municipal regulation. Examples, taken in order:
Wheel lock system vendors like Gatekeeper Systems embed an antenna system around the perimeter of store parking lots that triggers RF-enabled wheels to lock up when they cross the line, making them nearly impossible to move without an electronic key.
The California Shopping Cart Retrieval Corporation is a company formed by a consortium of retailers for the expressed purpose of collecting and returning carts to their rightful owners. The firm uses RFID tags and detectors to actively hunt down abandoned carts.
RFID Journal this month describes one such application.
A quick Google reveals that the City of Glendale, CA also has grappled with this problem, and dealt with it in part through municipal legislation at the beginning of this year.
Our friends “down under” are not suffering from a unique malaise. Solutions are available. None are perfect, but they can help stem the problem.
Requiring a deposit on a cart for large consumer goods and grocery operations such as Target and Kroger is not a very good idea (forget practical) and is certainly not the answer to a friendly and simplified shopping experience for their customers.
There are other solutions and technologies which could in fact help to stem the tide of “wandering” shopping carts. Solutions include RFID enabled grocery carts which are able to be tracked and tracked down should they leave the parking lot premises.
Other technical solutions include wheels which lock once they leave the perimeter of a store and the less high tech approach of a physical barrier that prohibits shopping carts from leaving parking lot premises (similar to the cart barriers found on escalators in airports).
Grocery carts cost on average of $100 to $200 per piece and the cost of lost carts on top of any local or state legeslation which may end up costing retailers for cart cleanup could make these technologies and solutions more feasible in the future.
Aldi figured this out a long time ago. A quarter is nothing and does not inconvenience anyone. No special technology or extra customer service is needed. If a cart does wander away, usually some enterprising neighborhood kid will return it for his 25 cent reward.
Here’s a solution. Put a nice bar code label on each cart. When the customer submits their loyalty card, also scan the cart label. That will deter 90% of your patrons from walking off with cart without spending any money and without asking for deposits.
In many countries in Europe, it’s quite common for the customer to put a coin in the cart to unlock it before it can be used. Once the cart is returned, to one of the many places around the store to make it more convenient to the customer, the coin is given back.
There seems to be no standard, but 50 cents, 1 Euro and 2 Euro are the most commonly used options. In some countries, smart retailers have introduced a “loyalty coin” that can be used in their carts instead of true money.
While it’s not a high price, everybody seems to be attached enough to the 0.50, 1 or 2 Euro, to take the effort to return the cart. A simple, not too unfriendly solution to solve the problem of missing carts…
You need one cart for the charcoal grill grates; two or three if you are having a family reunion or block party and a couple more to hold the kegs (burp); one for the wheels that go on your auto repair coaster and another for the wheels on the furniture mover; a complete cart for the laundry room makes washday easier while turning one over in the kitchen makes a nice kennel while training the puppy Doberman. The neighbor down the hall uses one as a bassinet for her baby girl while another neighbor raises chickens in his. For more uses see – cart mobbing.
Runaway carts? Some simple technology solves it: (1) Are there wheel-catching grates at the entrance to the parking lot? (2) Do you have RF wheel locking systems? (3) Do you charge a 25 cent deposit (a quarter, not $2) that can only be redeemed by returning the cart (a simple mechanical device using no paid labor)?
It’s amazing that supermarkets and drug stores lose $100 carts when it’s 100% preventable at reasonable costs.
Charging $2 to keep a shopping cart on premises may accomplish that objective but I doubt it would be appealing to a many shoppers.
I would suggest a model like Byerly’s and Lunds use in the Twin Cities. No shopping carts ever leave the stores. Customers either elect to have their grocery purchases transferred to a customer pick-up lane where they are hand-placed in the customer’s vehicle or else the customers carries the purchases out in their arms. There are never any bascarts on their parking lots or in nearby neighborhoods and no charges occur.
A&P has used the RFID for at least one of its New Jersey stores. Also they use a system similar to Aldi for their Food Basics stores. It really seems to work, and is not an inconvenience to customers.
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Maybe something like a service person taking your groceries out to the car for you, and loading them into your auto then taking the cart back to the store.
How about having shoppers drive their car to the “loading curb,” where the friendly attendant loads your groceries into the trunk for you, while you smile and stay in the car. All you have to do is walk out to your car, drive to the loading curb, then on the way home with your groceries….
Why do we continue to fight with self service and carts strewn across the lot? Not the best last impression you have when you leave your local supermarket….
In addition to security deposits and the excellent customer-service approaches mentioned above, let’s add to the solution list: wheel lock systems, entrepreneurship, RFID tagging and municipal regulation. Examples, taken in order:
Wheel lock system vendors like Gatekeeper Systems embed an antenna system around the perimeter of store parking lots that triggers RF-enabled wheels to lock up when they cross the line, making them nearly impossible to move without an electronic key.
The California Shopping Cart Retrieval Corporation is a company formed by a consortium of retailers for the expressed purpose of collecting and returning carts to their rightful owners. The firm uses RFID tags and detectors to actively hunt down abandoned carts.
RFID Journal this month describes one such application.
A quick Google reveals that the City of Glendale, CA also has grappled with this problem, and dealt with it in part through municipal legislation at the beginning of this year.
Our friends “down under” are not suffering from a unique malaise. Solutions are available. None are perfect, but they can help stem the problem.
Requiring a deposit on a cart for large consumer goods and grocery operations such as Target and Kroger is not a very good idea (forget practical) and is certainly not the answer to a friendly and simplified shopping experience for their customers.
There are other solutions and technologies which could in fact help to stem the tide of “wandering” shopping carts. Solutions include RFID enabled grocery carts which are able to be tracked and tracked down should they leave the parking lot premises.
Other technical solutions include wheels which lock once they leave the perimeter of a store and the less high tech approach of a physical barrier that prohibits shopping carts from leaving parking lot premises (similar to the cart barriers found on escalators in airports).
Grocery carts cost on average of $100 to $200 per piece and the cost of lost carts on top of any local or state legeslation which may end up costing retailers for cart cleanup could make these technologies and solutions more feasible in the future.
Aldi figured this out a long time ago. A quarter is nothing and does not inconvenience anyone. No special technology or extra customer service is needed. If a cart does wander away, usually some enterprising neighborhood kid will return it for his 25 cent reward.
Here’s a solution. Put a nice bar code label on each cart. When the customer submits their loyalty card, also scan the cart label. That will deter 90% of your patrons from walking off with cart without spending any money and without asking for deposits.
In many countries in Europe, it’s quite common for the customer to put a coin in the cart to unlock it before it can be used. Once the cart is returned, to one of the many places around the store to make it more convenient to the customer, the coin is given back.
There seems to be no standard, but 50 cents, 1 Euro and 2 Euro are the most commonly used options. In some countries, smart retailers have introduced a “loyalty coin” that can be used in their carts instead of true money.
While it’s not a high price, everybody seems to be attached enough to the 0.50, 1 or 2 Euro, to take the effort to return the cart. A simple, not too unfriendly solution to solve the problem of missing carts…
You need one cart for the charcoal grill grates; two or three if you are having a family reunion or block party and a couple more to hold the kegs (burp); one for the wheels that go on your auto repair coaster and another for the wheels on the furniture mover; a complete cart for the laundry room makes washday easier while turning one over in the kitchen makes a nice kennel while training the puppy Doberman. The neighbor down the hall uses one as a bassinet for her baby girl while another neighbor raises chickens in his. For more uses see – cart mobbing.
Runaway carts? Some simple technology solves it: (1) Are there wheel-catching grates at the entrance to the parking lot? (2) Do you have RF wheel locking systems? (3) Do you charge a 25 cent deposit (a quarter, not $2) that can only be redeemed by returning the cart (a simple mechanical device using no paid labor)?
It’s amazing that supermarkets and drug stores lose $100 carts when it’s 100% preventable at reasonable costs.
Charging $2 to keep a shopping cart on premises may accomplish that objective but I doubt it would be appealing to a many shoppers.
I would suggest a model like Byerly’s and Lunds use in the Twin Cities. No shopping carts ever leave the stores. Customers either elect to have their grocery purchases transferred to a customer pick-up lane where they are hand-placed in the customer’s vehicle or else the customers carries the purchases out in their arms. There are never any bascarts on their parking lots or in nearby neighborhoods and no charges occur.
A&P has used the RFID for at least one of its New Jersey stores. Also they use a system similar to Aldi for their Food Basics stores. It really seems to work, and is not an inconvenience to customers.