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Kash n' Karry will combat grocery cart loss with a device that responds to wiring under the parking lot.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 17, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- The shopping carts have been corralled. Lassoed. Dog collared. Whatever the view, these carts will not stray far from their store.
Pinellas Point's newly renovated Kash n' Karry supermarket has invested more than $25,000 on an electronic system to guard its carts.
Shoppers who try to take them out of bounds are in for a surprise. The wheels will lock and the cart will crash to a halt. That's good news for frustrated residents tired of unwanted carts on their lawns.
City Council member James Bennett calls the new system "awesome."
"This is so neighborhood friendly," he said.
"I tell you, I get calls all the time. 'I've got 10 shopping carts at my corner. What can I do about it?' "
Store manager John Sievenpiper explained how the system works.
"It's almost like an electronic dog collar," he said of the electric wiring buried under the parking lot.
"It's an invisible fence, like an invisible force field."
The only way to release the wheels is with a remote control, he said.
District manager Eddie Garcia said shopping carts cost about $125 each, so it is costly for stores when customers take them off their property.
"They just drop them off in someone else's yard," Garcia said. "The civic associations have come to us about installing a system like this and we've done what they've asked."
Though the system is up and running and signs explaining the "self-braking" wheels have been attached to each of the store's 196 carts, Sievenpiper said, Kash n' Karry is taking other steps to inform customers about the system.
"They are going to be painting a line around the parking lot to show people how far they can go," he said.
As for Sievenpiper himself, now he can stay home and mind his store.
"I was the only one with a pick-up truck, so I had to pick them up myself," he said of wandering carts.
"It wasn't the funnest job and I probably collected about 30 carts a week."