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Bag-Free Groceries: A Folding Shopping Cart You Bring Right to Your Kitchen

The Australian Shoppa Cart

By Rain Noe - November 11, 2020

How do you get your groceries home? In the city I loaded up a backpack at the supermarket, biked home, hiked up the steps to my apartment, and dropped the backpack on the counter for unloading. Here in the country, we load up disposable plastic bags (thanks, pandemic) at the supermarket, drive them home, hump all of the bags fifty feet across gravel to the house (we can't get the car any closer due to the landscape), then drop the bags on the counter for unloading.

However, I'm guessing the vast majority of you drive your groceries home, park in a paved driveway or garage, and carry the bags to your kitchen. If you do, Australian entrepreneurs Jeanne & Jeff O'Donnell have a product for you. Their Shoppa Cart folds up to fit neatly in your trunk, and allows you to do away with bags altogether:

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I think the design has some good features, like the purse hook, and the cupholder and smartphone holder seem to reflect how most people shop these days.

The idea of doing away with bags altogether is also alluring: Load the car at the store, unload directly into your kitchen cabinets.

The design would not have worked for me in the city (stairs, no elevator in my building) nor here in the country (gravel path to the house). But I think it would work well for those living in the paved world of the suburbs.

I have three points to raise: One, where does the cart "live" after you unload it? Do most folks have the space in a closet or garage? Even folded up, it seems to take up a decent amount of space.

Two is the size/capacity. It may be adequate for couples or singles, but the average American family I see coming out of the local Walmart would need three of these.

Three, there's one design feature that doesn't make sense to me--the little "safe" in the bottom of the basket:

As shown it's holding the car keys-- which means that when you return to the car, you must displace all of the groceries to get that bottom flap open and unlock the car. There'd be no place to put the groceries while the car is still locked. Beyond that, I thought the whole point of this design is that you don't have to unload the cart until you get home.

Those gripes aside, I like the concept a lot. What I'd really like to see is more ideation in this space, with a class of ID students all submitting design variants.

As far as I can tell, the Shoppa Cart is only available in Australia, and runs AUD $300 (USD $218) with all of the accessories.

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Sham B

2 years ago

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Nice idea but how about the dirt and germs you are trailing from the supermarket into your car and then into your home?! Those wheels will be touching everything and moving between all places! Yuck!

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Dee An

2 years ago

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The mechanism to slide in and out of the car trunk is clever.
For some people's homes it might make sense - I'm thinking of apartments with elevators and long corridors which would make carrying in the shopping a chore, and necessitate several trips between the apartment and the car.
Another big factor in the equation is the strength of the user. Both the male and female models in the photo look to have strong arms, but this trolley might prove to useful for people who struggle to carry boxes and bags.
Around twenty years ago, a major UK supermarket chain experiented with supplying its customers with stackable plastic boxes that would sit two abreast in their store trolleys, and fit easily in car trunks. Whilst popular with some shoppers, the supermarket chose to end the scheme after a year, for reasons I don't know.

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Matt Levine

2 years ago

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I like the concept. But I feel like I would primarily only need this at checkout. Transferring from my cart to the belt, and then to my personal buggy... Unless it is a store where I can scan items as I place them into my cart.

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