I’ve lived less than a mile away from Savannah’s downtown Kroger on East Gwinnett Street since 1995. I make a lot of short trips to the grocery, and I’d say — conservatively — that I’ve been to that store 1,200 times. I guess you could say I’m a regular customer.
There has long been an issue with shoppers walking home with their shopping carts, some of which get left in vacant lots or other visible places.
In recent days, there’s been a bit of a brouhaha about shopping carts being abandoned around town. The subject was even debated at last week’s City Council meeting and Eric Curl’s piece in yesterday’s paper has provoked a ton of comments. From Savannah warns grocers to collect their abandoned carts or face fines:
Now the city is trying to encourage the stores to keep their property off the streets and behind the sliding doors.
Assistant City Manager Peter Shonka recently sent letters to all the local grocers asking them to take better care of their property. Shonka said the city is considering ways to address the issue, including rounding up the carts and holding them until the businesses redeem a fee.
“We recognize that you often have little or no control over customers removing carts from your property,†he said. “However, it is the name of your company that appears on your cart creating visual blight and clutter.â€
A few comments on the debate and the issue generally, with a few key points emphasized:
- It seems like the problem has been diminishing around the downtown Kroger over the years, although that could just be me getting so used to seeing stray carts that I don’t notice them.
- Given the comments of a couple of aldermen from other districts, there seems to be a similar problem elsewhere, but I’m really only qualified to talk firsthand about the Gwinnett Street Kroger.
- Years ago, Kroger tried to discourage such thievery by putting clunky devices of some sort on the wheels. That was kind of nightmarish for shoppers, honestly.
- In my experience, Kroger has done a perfectly fine job of sending someone around to pick up stray carts.
- A sign clearly states that taking carts out of the lot is a violation of state law. It seems a little silly for the city to get after retailers when it’s their property that is being stolen.
- On the other hand, Kroger could end the taking of shopping carts if they chose. There’s always security on hand whenever the store is open, and it wouldn’t be so hard to get in the habit of noting when shoppers leave with their carts and don’t cross the street to the parking lot. Sometimes folks taking carts do so right in front of store employees who are out front.
- If security doesn’t want to confront shoppers about stealing carts, they can just call the police. This doesn’t seem like the best use of police resources, but it is a crime to take a cart.
- If Kroger could stop the behavior through relatively straightforward enforcement, why wouldn’t they do so? Obviously, the company has made a business decision. They buy the carts in bulk, of course, and the odds of recovering stray ones are probably pretty good. Large shopping carts can carry a whole lot more than someone can carry in handheld plastic bags. So it’s better to let the very occasional shopper buy as much as they want, take the cart (likely recoverable), avoid the confrontation, and keep that shopper’s business.
- It surely sets a terrible example for children in the neighborhood to see their elders walking around town with stolen property.
- The Savannah Morning News editorial page suggests that Kroger set up a deposit system like that used in other countries. For fun facts and info about shopping carts, check out Wikipedia, which is likely mostly right.
- The problem with a deposit system is that, as Wikipedia notes, it isn’t primarily a system for theft deterrence. It’s a way of getting customers to put carts back in the right place so that store employees aren’t constantly wrangling used carts from all over the premises. Check out the Aldi’s description of the system.
So, if we are even serious about trying to deal with this issue, my suggestion would be for local police to begin a kind of soft enforcement whenever they see someone pushing a shopping cart filled with newly purchased items. By definition, they are walking around with stolen property. Just tell them that it’s illegal to have the cart and they need to return it immediately after taking their groceries home.
At the same time, Kroger and other companies could step up their enforcement efforts and also sell for a low cost a couple of different sizes of collapsible, personal shopping carts. I see some shoppers using them now, and they seem like really practical products in an urban environment like ours.
Even though this has been a problem for many years and even though Savannah has many other problems, I like the fact that the relatively new folks at City Hall, like City Manager Cutter and Assistant City Manager Shonka, are willing to event the fray.