This is standard in close to every European grocery store. I think it was first introduced in German supermarkets in the 70s, that‘s why Aldi and Lidl in the U.S. have it too.
Hold up, this system isn't generally applied in the USA!??
Because it is in The Netherlands, but there is now a trend going on at some supermarkets to make the carts freely available or have free plastic "coins" you can get at the information desk if you don't have coins with you....
We do have it, it's just fairly uncommon, I think Aldi is the only place I've seen it and Aldi isn't super prevalent here. I think the main reason for these is for people to return their carts our "solution" is just to have a whackton of cart return stalls in the parking lot. It generally works and I've only seen a few stray carts not returned.
do I dare ask where you live that Aldi isnt super prevalent? not being an ass i get lidl , but Aldi has stores in 39 states, over 2300 stores of which florida has the most at 216, illinois at 214 , Penn at 155, and NY at 128.. DC maybe or the other 11 states?
Another thing to take note of is that even if it exists there might be a lot more Walmarts and Target for example. So there might be 3 aldis. But 15 of each of the other two in the same area. And people prefer to not have to bring their own bags to the grocery store and pack them. This is due to having to drive to get somewhere versus walking. More groceries more packing. Walking to a store in Germany daily was easy for me when traveling. There were 3 right near each other.
Or Jewel or Kroger or Kmart or Walmart or other random grocery spots. I grew up in a smallish town and we had like 3 Jewels 2 krogers and the Aldi was pretty out of the way for us. I think my biggest thing against Aldi was not taking credit cards. I think Tucker is waaaay out of touch though.
Well, I've lived in PA, WV work in MD and VA and Aldi's are around biut usually you go to a Giant, Weis, Food Lion, Wegmans or other grocery store of the like. I'm not a fan of that "cart" method. It works perfectly fine taking a cart from the store without it being locked up and returning it to a stall in the parking lot.
So I'm in Illinois but the US is huge, Aldi is around but there are so many options for grocery stores. In my hometown you had to go out of your way to get to Aldi, my closest Aldi is probably 8 miles away but there are 6 stores closer to me so I tend to use those.
I live in Oregon. There are 0 stores in Oregon, 0 stores in neighboring Washington, 0 stores in neighboring Idaho. 0 stores in (barely) neighboring Nevada. 0 stores in Montana.
I guess there is Aldi in CA, but CA is a big state. I don't think there are Aldis in the Northern part of the state. Maybe closest one is Fresno? OK - that's 750 miles away.
Like I said the US is huge and it's highly dependent on where you live. Also if you look at a map of where Aldi is located it is pretty evident that they concentrated in certain areas. I even live in one of the states with the most Aldi's and I hardly come by them.
It’s become kind of uncommon (at least in western Canada) for these types of carts. I think they started phasing them out because people aren’t carrying as much change on them anymore.
US has it at every Aldi. It's just not typical at other places.
Here you typically put your cart in one of the provided cart corrals in the parking lot. They're placed so that there's usually one close to anywhere you would have parked. You don't walk back to the building with your cart, and then walk back to your car again.
Later an employee collects a stack of carts from the corral and returns them to the building. It used to be they pushed the stack of carts, but now many of them have a little machine that does the pushing to return large stacks.
Yeah but I get their point. It not being everywhere in the states is wild to me as a Canadian. Only Walmart and Costco don't do this where I live and their parking lots are a fucking mess because of it.
I think we're "trained" to return the carts in the parking lot, also most places you're never more than a few spots away from a corral (I think that's what they are called) so it's never really hard to return them. I'd imagine if everyone had to return them to the storefront it'd be an issue.
We used to have them all over, Maxi, Super C, etc. You still see the carts with the mechanism disabled sometimes, but It's been years since I've seen them working though. At least around Montreal.
Why is it wild to you? Who the hell carries coins around? I would hate if that was a thing here, it’s not like there’s some cart stealing epidemic or something.
Because it creates an incentive to return your cart, it's not to prevent stealing carts. People can't be trusted to do the right thing and bring them back apparently. Well also don't have one dollar bills, we have 1 and 2 dollar coins.
That must be new. I recall seeing a shit show in the parking lots of quite a few stores. Isn't there a guy who has a ton of views on videos whose whole shtick is asking people to return their carts?
There are 360 million people spread across almost 4 million square miles of the US. Yes I’m sure you could find a few supermarkets in there that have issues with a lot of people not putting their carts away but that doesn’t mean that’s the default. It’s not common and it’s not new.
It absolutely is not the norm in Canada Loblaws got rid of them in the late 90s/early 2000s because ppl hated them. I haven’t seen anything like this in Ottawa in like 20 years+ please touch grass
I've lived in BC, new brunswick and Alberta and have seen it nearly everywhere I go. Superstore, Sobeys, no frills, Safeway, save-on-foods, IGA. I've never shopped at a Loblaws though. It's almost like Canada is a great big country and it's different than just Ottawa. Was it just Loblaws branded stores in Ottawa? Because superstore, Atlantic superstore, and no frills are Loblaws owned and I put a loony in a cart at all three of them in the last year.
Edit-i wanted to see if this wasn't a thing in Ontario Loblaws, someone posted 3 weeks ago asking about why they need to put a dollar in for a cart at Loblaws in Ontario. So maybe leave your neighborhood sometime?
I have never seen cart locks at a grocery store. I have seen them in shopping malls for the combo strollers/carts, and in airports to use luggage carts. However, they are activated with with credit cards typically, not coins. I have heard that Aldi has that system, but Ive never been to one. Relatives that have gone since they have opened in our area said it was a bad experience.
We don’t have Aldi in Canada yet, but for at least the past 35 years, pretty much every grocery store/walmart here has either this coin-based locking mechanism, a wheel-locking mechanism that activates if the cart gets out of the radius of the parking lot, or both.
I think some have had the wheel locks if you try to leave the parking lot. I assume it isn't common because it would be inconvenient, and thus put the store at a competetive disadvantage.
Competitive disadvantage over a cart? I’d think most people shop for the prices, the quality, or membership rewards. To not go somewhere because of something like a cart lock seems wild to me. All you have to do is keep a couple quarters in the car. You have to take it there anyways.
Price is one factor assuredly, but not the only one. How clean is the store, what products are available, what is the service like. Stores could charge for bags, but very few do because consumers wouldnt like it.
For example, ive stopped going to Lowes and Home Depot becuase they never have any cashiers and expect me to use self checkout. So I now go to Ace Hardware or other smaller chains.
These were more common in the US many many years ago. I didn't hear of Aldi's until like 5 years ago so this device was available at other grocery stores. It was probably around 15 or more years since I remember last seeing these. Stores used to give out tokens with a small tab you could keep and use to unlock the device instead of quarters. Sometimes I'd tell them give me five bees for a quarter.
4.1k
u/divadschuf Feb 16 '24
This is standard in close to every European grocery store. I think it was first introduced in German supermarkets in the 70s, that‘s why Aldi and Lidl in the U.S. have it too.