When it comes to groceries people spend more time thinking about where their food comes from than they do about the trolley they use to shop. And that’s only fair: a shopping trolley is never going to be found on the end of a fork. But little is left to chance when it comes to how we gather food in the store. The dairy aisle is deliberately placed far from the doors of the supermarket to encourage you to wander around. Brands spend big bucks to place cartoon-style products in a debilitatingly low spot in the store so kids can see and beg for them. Even the shopping trolley is designed to influence how much you buy whether you’re wheeling around a large single-basket trolley or one of the compact two-tiered ones. And while the latter is new to many shoppers especially since it’s not available in all supermarkets it’s actually a lot older than you might think.
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This Foldable Shopping Cart | Best Shopping Carts for Personal Use #shopping #trollybag
Often referred to online as the “millennial shopping cart” the two-tier shopping cart was invented in 1937 to meet the rise of supermarkets that sold more products than conventional grocery stores. Instead of a hand basket the wheeled cart featured two baskets stacked on top of each other. This two-tier shopping cart was more portable and most importantly capable of holding more items. Many shoppers today prefer the design which eventually evolved into the even larger single-basket cart but it wasn’t an instant hit in the 1930s. Here’s how its success blossomed.
In the midst of the Depression the 1930s were ripe for innovation. The decade saw the advent of electric refrigeration frozen foods became more widely available and stores grew larger and larger. But as more goods became available handy baskets couldn’t hold everything people wanted to buy. So as the grocery shopping landscape changed so did the methods of navigating it.
After his first foray into wholesale produce went bankrupt in the 1920s supermarket owner Sylvan Goldman studied grocery stores in California. He returned to his home state of Oklahoma to start a chain of self-service stores that sold woven baskets so customers could shop freely. By the mid-1930s he owned half of the Piggly Wiggly chain the first modern supermarket. But Sylvan still wanted to improve the shopping experience by dedicating himself to increasing how much people could carry—and buy. Inspired by a folding chair he and mechanic Fred Young designed the two-tier shopping cart in 1937. The wheeled shopping cart consisted of two wire baskets suspended one above the other by a metal frame.
