Top 5 Places Your Shopping Carts Are Going

Many People take grabbing a cart for granted and do not consider all it means to both the retailer and the customer. The sales it enables, the experience it delivers, what it says about the brand. The shopping cart is commonly the most neglected piece of store equipment, yet it is often the longest single point of interaction between the customer and a store’s brand. This relationship is critical in many ways:

• Having an ample supply of clean carts in good repair available when a shopper walks in is key to maximizing sales and driving a positive shopper experience – prioritized by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Keeping carts on the property minimizes the need for collection services, minimizes lost & stolen carts and, allows a retailer to operate with less carts saving on spend and maintenance repair
• Not seeing a retailer’s carts off property littering neighborhoods, drainage ditches and parks helps promote the brand image of a retailer as a good corporate citizen with a secondary benefit of keeping your carts clean and in better repair.
• Keeping carts onsite, clean and in good repair can eliminate 25%+ of cart cleaning and repair expenses.
• Supply chain issues, manufacturer capacity, and steel costs have impacted the supply and have made replacing costs an expensive proposition.

In the end, it is far less expensive in dollars and as a brand to take care of your cart fleet. Learn more about how cart containment can decrease your store’s maintenance and retrieval costs by 90%, achieving a return of investment of less than one year. The savings doesn’t stop there. Even with carts relegated to the confines of a retailer’s parking lot, Gatekeeper Systems CartManager_® XD solution streamlines the on-property retrieval process for their employees, too. As retailers struggle to hire and retain frontline workers, they are looking for new ways of working that represent a material labor savings. CartManager_® XD is a major advantage over traditional methods by reducing costs associated with shopping cart retrieval, including labor hours, worker’s compensation injuries, and cart-vehicle accidents.

Benefits of moving to Power Assisted Cart collection

• Commonly doubles or triples cart collection per trip (depending on retailer policy) allowing the retailer to save labor, boosting the level of productivity per individual
• Helps to increase sales by ensuring ample carts are available for customers when they are ready to spend money.
• Reduces likelihood of injury from the gathering and collection of carts.
• Broadens labor pool as any properly trained individual can safely collect carts regardless of physical condition or stature.

It’s 10pm, do you know where your shopping carts are? With Gatekeeper technology, every retailer can claim a small victory in the fight against missing shopping carts. Your bottom-line will thank you, and so will your community.

So – where are they? Here are the top 5 places your shopping carts are going:

Abandoned shopping carts have been a hot topic amongst many city and state officials. Aside from the obvious nuisance they become as town fodder, deserted shopping carts are a hazard to drivers when they accumulate near busy roadways and intersections. Shopping carts also can be found abandoned in ditches and other waterways. Quite often, these carts cause civil engineering mayhem by clogging important drainage systems which cause flooding and other serious damage.

One must appreciate the resourcefulness of the contemporary shopping cart caper for this ingenious idea. We laugh because we must not cry – until we realize that not only the shopping cart, but also the menu was compliments of the local supermarket. Shopping carts have become a staple for those less fortunate. Without proper controls, your fleet could quickly become the centerpiece of the next neighborhood cookout.

The number 1 place your shopping carts are going is…NOWHERE! If you’re a Gatekeeper Systems customer, that is. Cart Containment stops carts from ever leaving a store’s property, saving them from abandonment, damage, or city fines. By combining a radio frequency enabled perimeter antenna with self-locking SmartWheels. Gatekeeper helps keep your shopping carts at your location, and available for your customers while vastly reducing store operational costs. Cart retrieval, maintenance, replacement, and city ordinances can routinely cost a store $15,000 a year.

About Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper Systems’ expanded product suite of intelligent cart solutions offers solutions for EVERY retailer’s needs to minimize merchandise loss and reduce asset and labor expenditures.

Gatekeeper’s loss prevention, retail analytics, and cart containment solutions utilize patented locking wheel technology to put an end to cart-based shoplifting, shopping cart loss, and uninformed decision-making. Cart management solutions increase safety and reduce labor costs by maximizing productivity while simultaneously resulting in a positive store image.

Intelligent pushout theft prevention solutions stop thieves and their cart full of unpaid merchandise from leaving the store. Customizable wheel technology allows retailers to defend their entire store or just a high loss department based on the store’s unique layout.

NEW Retail Analytics solutions provide increased visibility for informed decision making. Increase efficiency, optimize fleet size, and perfect the entire customer shopping experience with store and enterprise-level analytics.

Find out why the top 20 retailers that use shopping carts rely on Gatekeeper solutions.