Decades ago, when consumers went grocery shopping it was usually at a small neighborhood store. The store might be 1,000 square feet or slightly more.

Today, a typical American grocery store is 35,000 to 50,000 square feet. Big box stores are up to 250,000 square feet.

Back then, upon entering the grocery store, shoppers picked up a wooden or wire hand basket near the entrance. After filling their basket, the shopper went to a counter, not a check out lane, where each item’s price was noted and placed into a paper or cloth bag. This transaction was usually conducted by the store’s owner.

In many instances this shopping environment instilled a personal and lasting relationship between the customer and the store owner.

On June 30, 1937, America’s shopping experience would dramatically change. Not just in grocery stores, but within most retail shopping environments.

The Man with a Vision

Sylvan N. Goldman was born in 1898. As a World War I veteran, with his brother along with a uncle, they opened a wholesale grocery service in Cisco, Texas. In a challenging market, the business failed.

In 1926 Goldman and his brother opened a regional Tulsa, Oklahoma grocery chain called Sun Stores. The establishments were a success and three years later they sold the group to Skaggs-Safeway.

With the October 29, 1929 stock market crash, the brothers lost all their profits from this sale.

Being persistent, the brothers relocated to Oklahoma City where they opened another regional grocery chain called Standard. Success continued and four years later they purchased a near bankrupt grocery chain called Humpty Dumpty.

The Concept and Design

Within his stores, Goldman noticed customers tended to fill their hand baskets once and take the goods to the check-out counter to be purchased. This purchase was traditionally ten to 15 items and shoppers rarely returned the same day to purchase additional goods.

Goldman thought, “What if I offered customers a more convenient way to select and purchase goods; would my sales volume increase?”

Goldman noticed a nearby wooden folding chair’s design. He thought, if I took this chair’s basic design and added wheels to roll and several baskets to carry goods?

With an employee and skilled mechanic Fred Young, they built America’s first shopping cart. Their cart offered a minor assembly process when the customer used a cart. They first had to take the folded wooden frame with wheels; open it and then place the two baskets on the frame.

However, initially from a grocery shopper’s view the invention was a flop.

According to shopping cart historian, Rob Lammie, in a 2010 feature story, “Men were too proud to admit they needed help carrying a basket, and some younger women said they had pushed enough baby buggies that they weren’t going to use one for shopping, too.”

Lammie added, “Distraught, Goldman hatched another plan – he hired attractive men and women to push carts around inside the store and pretend to shop. When real customers came through the doors and refused the cart, the young woman at the entrance looked back into the store and said, “Why? Everyone else is using them.” Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.”

Within years, after the carts were introduced, grocery stores redesigned their shopping aisles and check-out counters to accommodate customers, carts, and the volume of food and goods being purchased.

Emerging Designs and Technology

In 1946 Kansas City engineer Orla Watson designed a shopping cart with a rear metal swinging door. This enabled multiple carts to be nested at the same time.

Sadly, with his patent pending and manufacturing challenges numerous unlicensed companies took his concept and manufactured their telescoped carts.

With the arrival of the 1950s and into the following decades, shopping cart designs added baby seats, drink holders, a plastic handle, even bigger baskets, and upgraded wheels.

In recent years the cart’s design and shopping function evolved to offer electronic technology.

Lammie revealed, “Springboard/Mercatus, has developed the Concierge system – a small LCD touchscreen attached to the handle that can make your shopping trip just a little bit easier. The screen not only shows you a map of the store, including where items are located in each aisle, but will also track where you are within the store to tell you what items are on sale in the aisle you’re currently walking down.”

Lammie added insight on another electronic concept, “If you have a store membership card, you could swipe the card on the cart and it will tell you what items you’ve purchased before and on sale that week.”

He added, “While you do your shopping, you can scan the barcodes of items as you place them in the cart, and they’ll automatically be added to your card number (and removed from the store’s inventory). When you’re finished, you simply hand the check-out person your membership card, they swipe it, and you swipe your debit card to pay for everything in your cart.”

In recent years, and to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act, battery driven carts offered convenient seating and large front load basket.

Shopping Carts are not Inexpensive

A typical metal shopping cart costs up to $150, while a plastic cart will cost slightly under $100. Thus, in a major grocer or retail establishment could easily have an inventory of up to $50,000 in carts.

In some markets carts have a propensity to disappear.

Lammie noted, “Almost every major city has one or more companies whose sole business is to retrieve and return abandoned carts to their rightful owners for a small fee.”

A San Diego, California based company offers an operating system where a plastic cap slams down over one of the front wheels when a cart crosses over a magnetic parking lot detecting barrier. This system essentially stops a cart cold. An employee can unlock the wheel remotely or with a special electronic key.

At the ALDI grocery market chain, should you like a cart you deposit a quarter into the handle which unlocks the cart. When you are finished using the cart you simply renest the cart with others and your quarter is refunded.

The state of Michigan has a law stating it is a misdemeanor to remove a cart from a property without the owner’s permission. In addition, off-retail site carts without an owner’s name, tag, or contact information are considered abandoned.

Shopping carts can also be pretty gross. After playground equipment and public transportation, carts rank number three in being germ infested. And, with the advent of COVID, another layer of concern surfaced.

In some markets there are commercial firms who sanitize carts in large numbers. In addition, per some state’s requirement or a store’s personal desire, sanitary wipes are offered upon entering the store to disinfect the cart’s handle and other areas.

Next time you grab a shopping cart at your grocer or retail establishment, you will be rolling down the aisle with a piece of ingenious American history.

Jeffrey D. Brasie is a retired health care CEO. He frequently writes historic feature stories and op-eds for various Michigan newspapers. As a Vietnam-era veteran, he served in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Naval Reserve. He served on the public affairs staff of the secretary of the Navy. He grew up near the tip of the mitt and resides in suburban Detroit.