My husband and I rarely go to the grocery store together, but we were coming home from an event the other week, so we decided to quickly swing by the store and do our weekly shopping.
This reminded me of my early days in the USA, over 16 years ago now, when I was negotiating the new experience of the American grocery store which is called a ‘supermarket’ in the UK. My confusion was increased when I asked a member of staff where the ‘trolleys’ were kept. After receiving a blank stare, I remembered my husband called these ‘carts’ although when comprehension dawned in the staff member’s eyes she said, “oh you mean a buggy!”
As a ‘buggy’ in England means a child’s stroller, I was still rather confused as I was not accompanied by a child. However, I decided to go with it and fortunately she pointed me in the right direction.
Since then, I have discovered that shopping carts are also called buggies in Canada and in New Zealand are known as ‘trundlers’.
This got me thinking about the origins of the shopping cart, which was invented in the 1930s by Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma. His invention was first rolled out (pun intended) in 1937 and the original design was two folding baskets on wheels, which was inspired by a folding chair.
Twenty years earlier, another retailer, Memphis- based Piggly Wiggly, had created and patented the self-service grocery store format. Before 1916, buyers handed their list to a store clerk behind a counter who gathered the items and bagged them up. It only took a few years for other retailers to adopt the self-service format. However, hand carried baskets were used by all of them.
Back in Oklahoma, Goldman had noticed that shoppers in his Humpty Dumpty stores stopped buying things when the hand baskets they carried got heavy or full. How could he increase the number of items that a shopper could buy to more than they could actually carry? Goldman’s innovation aimed to solve this problem, and along with a couple of his employees he put wheels on a folding chair, attached a shopping basket, rolled it around his office and tinkered with designs. Then he patented the “Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores”. The Oklahoma News headline of June 25, 1937, proclaimed “No More Heavy Baskets to Carry!” Humpty Dumpty Stores advertised the invention as part of a new “No Basket Carrying Plan.”
Surprisingly, his initial launch of these shopping carts was met with firm shopper resistance, mostly through embarrassment.
Men didn’t like them because they thought they looked effeminate, and women thought they looked like baby carriages and were insulted by the similar look.
But Goldman was also a marketing innovator. He hired greeters to explain the fancy new invention and also hired attractive male and female models to push carts around his stores to demonstrate how good they looked and how functional they were.
It only took a few weeks to overcome shopper objections, and the shopping cart has been a mainstay of the modern grocery store ever since.
The design, however, continued to evolve. Just after the end of the Second World War, a Kansas City engineer and draftsman named Orla Watson set up the Telescoping Cart Company and promptly patented what he called “the telescope cart”. This design featured a back panel that swung upwards so that multiple carts could nest together for significant space savings and compact storage. This feature was extremely popular, but Watson found himself in multiple legal battles with United Steel, the IRS, and our old friend Sylvan Goldman.
After a court fight, Goldman acquired the exclusive license to manufacture this design, which today forms the basis of the modern shopping cart.
Goldman, ever the observant shopkeeper, added child seats a few years later to help mothers manage their children, and in the 1960s, retractable seat belts in the child seat area were included.
Swivel wheels came in the 1980s, and today there are ‘smart carts’ with barcode scanners, cashless payment systems, and anti-theft devices.
While there are a multitude of designs and quality levels available, today’s standard heavy metal shopping cart costs up to $250, weighs 60-70 lbs, can carry 300 to 400 lbs, and lasts for 4 to 10 years. There is a lot more information at The Smithsonian Institute www.americanhistory.si.edu.
I say goodbye this week with a quote from well before the invention of the shopping cart by one of my American heroes, the great and wise Benjamin Franklin.
“The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise”.
God Bless America!
Lesley grew up in London, England and made Georgia her home in 2009. She can be contacted at lesley@lesleyfrancispr.com or via her PR and marketing agency at www.lesleyfrancispr.com.