Shopping Cart Day
Streamlining errands, these mobile assistants effortlessly carry your finds, making every trip to the shops a breeze.
Celebrate the humble shopping cart by driving foot traffic and basket size through nostalgia, impulse-buy promotions, and family-friendly in-store experiences.
- 'Did you know? Shopping carts were invented in 1937 to keep customers in-store longer—here's how they've evolved'
- 'Cart Day Deals: Stock up and save—bigger cart, bigger savings this June'
- 'Parents: Celebrate the child seat innovation that changed shopping forever'
- 'The psychology of the cart: Why you buy more when you use one (and how to shop smarter)'
Shopping carts made their introduction into the shopping world on June 4, 1937. The invention came from Sylvan Goldman, the owner of the Humpty Dumpty chain of supermarkets in Oklahoma.
Goldman realized that his customers needed a better way to carry their groceries as their hand held baskets were getting full. Rather than have them leave the store when the baskets were full, Goldman created a foldable cart on wheels so customers would stay in the store longer.
Although the shopping cart was originally not well-received, they eventually grew in popularity and improved designs showed up. Adding a child seat to the cart was useful for parents, and then the telescoping design helped solve a storage problem. Since the 1960s, when seatbelts were added to the child seat, the design of the shopping cart has not really changed much.
Exchanging heavy metal for lighter-weight plastic has been part of the evolution of the shopping cart for some stores in more recent decades. Some companies have also made the shopping carts wider so they can seat two children, or even a baby carrier.
While for many years the items went into the shopping cart, then had to come out to be scanned by the clerk and then placed in bags and back into the cart, the system has changed a bit.
Many grocery stores and big box supermarket chains have made it possible for shoppers to grab a scanner on their way into the store, scan and bag items as they go, and then pay at the front of the store before leaving.
It’s an even more convenient way to use the shopping cart that the original inventor probably never would have imagined!
Shopping Cart Day is here to show some love and appreciation for this modern design that allows people to get a ton of shopping done in an efficient manner, wheel it right out to their cars and drive it on home.
Use a Shopping Cart
Certainly one of the most obvious ways that Shopping Cart Day can be celebrated would be to head on over to a big box store and do some shopping! Sometimes referred to as a buggy (in the southern US), carriage (in New England) or a trolley (in Britain or Australia), whatever they are called, be sure to grab one of these on the way into the store. But be forewarned that people who use a shopping cart to carry their items may be more likely to make impulse buys than those who carry a smaller basket. So if that shopping list is small, or impulse purchases are particularly tempting, be sure to make good shopping decisions – no matter how big the cart is!
Listen to a Shopping Cart Playlist
Who knew there were so many songs about shopping carts by many different artists?! In honor of Shopping Cart Day, perhaps it would be fun to cobble together a soundtrack or playlist that can be blasted at home or at work (through headphones, of course) to get in the mood of the day’s theme. To get started making a playlist, check out some of these songs by artists who apparently love carts and shopping enough to write songs about them: Shopping Carts by J. Monty (2019)Lost in the Supermarket by The Clash (1979)Shopping Trolley by Beth Orton (2006)Shopping Bags by De La Soul (2004)
Keep a Coin Handy
Those who live in the US and shop at discount stores like Aldi or Lidl may have found that a quarter or a token is required to fetch a cart. But don’t worry, it’s just a rental fee and the quarter can be retrieved when the cart is returned. This is a way that some shops keep carts under control, prevent shopping cart accidents with vehicles in the parking lot and keep their costs down. This idea actually hails from Europe where a large number of stores use this scheme to keep people from stealing their carts. In addition, this type of plan encourages honest customers to put the carts back where they belong, making them more easily available for other customers to use.