It costs a quarter to shop for groceries. 
I’m not a guy who likes to carry change in my pocket so every time I try to go shopping for groceries I forget the quarter I need to use a cart.
Which usually leads to me walking around the store carrying two baskets and kicking a third. When I finally do remember to bring a quarter, I’m keeping the cart. Because at 25 cents, them carts is priced to move.
P.S. For those of you compelled to tell me why stores do this, I know. You don’t have to post it in the comments section.
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and i supposed the dont take american quarters do they?
You could even host a barbecue: http://blog.onlinemetals.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/shopping-cart-grill.jpg
You definitely need a cart to hold your milk in a bag.
wow, 25 cents canadian is like 12 cents american. that really is a good deal!!!
You might want to look at exchange rates, the US dollar has taken a huge dive in value and is now worth LESS than the Canadian dollar!
So you are paying 25 cents to use their cart and when you return the cart you get your money back. We now have to pay 10 cents a paper bag if we forgot to bring our own.
it’s like that at many places in LA. Mostly smaller ones.
I got a couple of reusable bags and I actually put my groceries in them as I shop. That way I can weigh the bags to make sure they aren’t too heavy since I walk. The guys are TJs are awesome cause I am there pretty much every week. They will unpack one bag, ring it and repack it and then do the other so they don’t mess up the balance.
So if you are buying a small amount of groceries and use a hand basket you pay nothing extra. If you buy a large amount groceries you have to pay extra to use a cart. Seems backasswards to me. Ps love your new show.
My solution to the problem is that I keep a quarter and a loonie in one of the hidden compartments in my car, or I tape it to the handle of one of my reusable cloth shopping bags. Those coins are always set aside for using the grocery carts, so I never have to carry around those tiny little baskets
LMAO! I’ve never heard of that before. Heck, yeah, take the cart home and reuse it.
Hey, “Alcatraz” is da bomb! Loved it and was glued to the set and cannot wait to see what happens next.
There are stores in St. Louis that do this. We usually leave a handful of change in the car.
I hear there’s a black market for shopping carts in Canada. Haven’t you ever seen Trailer Park Boys?
Wait till you go to super store
it costs a dollar!
some people use tokens and leave them in their wallets.
I find it simpler to leave 1.25$ in my cup holder.
lolz! ‘them carts is priced to move’ I forgot about this, actually. I think they started doing this where I used to live in NJ. But I never see it now.
I gots myself one of them plastic chips in the size of a quarter, keep it in my wallet. Since I can’t pay for nottin with it, it stays there. And I always gots a quarter for them carts! Wahoo!
Picturing a seeing. eye. basket.
It’s like that here in Germany, too. They make metal or plastic coins for that so you don’t have to put actual money in the cart, but I keep losing those…
When we lived in Germany, my then 7 year old son would gather abandoned carts at any store we went to and collect the deutsche marks left in them. He made a decent income, for a 7 year old. (And all the carts were returned, so bonus for the stores!)
As has been mentioned, get a plastic chip. It’s easier than kicking the baskets.
They have those at Aldi’s as well. My youngest son also used to do that with the carts.
I thought you would drag the third basket with your crotch loops
Next thing you know they will be putting a low-jack on carts ….
I don’t know about lowjack, but they do make shopping carts with wheels that lock if you push them too far away from the store, usually before you reach the end of the parking lot.
I am glad that they don’t do that here!
There are plastic chips that are attached to a keychain, google for “plastic cart chip keychain”.
Wow, I had completely forgotten about those. Back in the 90s a market in NY tried that idea and it didn’t last long if I remember correctly:)
That is crazy! Don’t shop there…do they all do it? Just nuts! I would ride my bike with my bob trailer and go thru loading it with groceries….
BTW, loved the show….like seeing and old friend again….take care.
here in bc… all the grocery stores do this.. you put a quarter or a dollar in.. and when you put the cart back.. you get your change back.
Oh my, quarter carts exist in the U.S. too. The bums here make a living by trolling the parking lots, kindly offering to return your cart and keeping your quarter. They no longer ask for money. They just ask for carts!
That doesn’t bother me one bit. If I had a car and was pushing my groceries out to it I’d happily let a homeless person have it to go get my dollar or whatever. Because he/she is doing something. Same with the guys that dig in the trash for cans. I can’t get mine to any place myself so when I hear the local guy outside I take the weeks bag to him.
It’s the people that just sit on the street with a sign that bug me. Especially when they get rude if you walk by.
The practise to put a coin deposit for the carts, started , because, irresponsible,selfish, primitive people, took the carts home or left them around the parking lot ,and when a customer needed one, there was no one to be found, or they had crashed onto a car.
Here in Calgary, we have to put a “looney” – One dollar coin- and the cart’s wheels lock if one tries to take the cart beyond the store’s parking lot..
Paying for the bags is a sensible thing to do, we do not need more plastic ones, but people are too lazy to bring their own reusable ones,
Forgetting to bring a coin for the cart, is like forgetting to bring money to pay the bus fare. No sympathy here!
I actually miss that about Vancouver – my folks didn’t drive, so we’d walk the cart home and then return it for the quarter later. In Montreal and Gatineau (where I am now), grocery stores have barriers so that you can’t talk your shopping carts much further than the store exit – some have high tech carts that will actually brake on you! It makes grocery shopping without a car much more difficult. Also when I lived in Vancouver and we moved house, my mum and I would get a shopping cart and every day after school we’d make treks with a cart full of kitchenware and random boxes of things between our old apartment and new house.
Some stores if you go to customer service and let them know you forgot change will just give you a quarter.
Well, according to their sign, it should only cost a quarter of one cent to rent a cart. Next time you put in a quarter for a cart I would demand they provide you with 3/4 a penny as change.
^24 cents and 3/4 a penny as change.
Ha – I have seen this exact sign 1000 times and never noticed that! One of my huge pet peeves…how can we expect kids to learn how to write stuff like this properly, when the signs all around them are WRONG??
You can buy little fake coin things that come with a hook to attach them to your key ring. They usually cost $1 or $2, and the money goes to charity. I haven’t ever seen them at Save-On, but Safeway sometimes carries them, as does Superstore (for the evil $1 carts!). I’m one of those people who could never manage to keep change in my car for this, so I was forever having to beg random people in the parking lot or ask at customer service!
i had the same thought about price/cart. no point in going for that refund!
I can remember a local place having those. Ironically, they offered free quarter size tokens that attached to your keychain to use. Kinda made the whole system pointless.
They didn’t last long.
The point of this system is, at least in Aldi’s case which is the only place I have personally encountered it, is to be able to keep their operation costs low… which in turn enables them to keep their product prices low. I personally am a fan of the idea. They’re not paying people to run around the parking lot and wrangle up carts that people are too lazy to bring back. By not having to hire extra people to do that extra task, they can pass along that savings to you. It’s not so much that they’re charging a quarter only to give you your quarter back. It’s a way of keeping the carts locked up and ensuring that if you want the luxury of USING their carts, you are agreeing to put them back. I think it’s a fantastic idea.
(Sorry, I realized I couldn’t edit my reply)
In fact, having the non-currency token attached to your keychain is actually a BETTER way to go about it. Some people might not value their quarter so much and decide, “Oh fuck it, it’s just a quarter, I’m leaving my cart right here in the parking lot”. But you stick in that token that’s attached to your keys… it’s not so much an option anymore.
Here in the US, the Aldi’s all have this system on their carts. We have a “cart quarter” in our ash tray for just such an occasion. However, sometimes you find someone who was too lazy to put their cart back, and then you can take it back and make 25 cents.
That is a ridiculous attempt at creating a disincentive to steal carts or replace them to the corral. As you say, what cart-stealer would choose not to keep the cart for $0.25? Der.
It might not deter a thief, but it does get people to put the carts back instead of leaving them rolling around the parking lot. Which I greatly appreciate since my car seems to be a loose cart magnet!
Ok..one for you..you cracked my old ass up on that one..
Jorge, first of all we really loved Alcatraz! You’re a hoot. We read somewhere that they want to try out those new shopping carts that have some kind of breaking mechanism that will stop the cart if it goes too far from the store. Anyway, many many years ago my friend and I used to hang out at the malls. The J. C. Penny’s decided to make money off of a very basic human need. They put lock boxes on the doors of the restroom and charged ten cents to use the facility. I put my ten cents in, finished my business, held the door for my friend, and a little old lady came in saying, “What now? Ten cents to go to the bathroom?” We held the door for her, too. She thanked us and said, “You know I’ll be damed if I’m gonna pay ten cents for a cup of coffee and ten cents to pee it out!” The store must have gotten several complaints because eventually the boxes were removed. I wonder if that’s unconstitutional? My friend and I were wondering what they did for the urinals? How the hell would you lock up a urinal
anyway? Tell Beth and the pups “Hi.”
Some stores in the UK do the same but here it is £1 which, according to google, is about 1 and a half Canadian dollars! But we do have quite a trolley (as we call them) stealing issue here, usually kids who then go and dump them in local ponds for a laugh.
As well as paying more for our shopping receptacles we also have to wait longer for great new TV. No Alcatraz for us yet – boo!
Omg, being completely funemployed, I wouldn’t be able to afford a cart ever! I never have “real” cash on me. Though, come to think of it, I guess I am only just filling up baskets anyhow. Long live basket shopping! Haha.
We used to have those all over Ontario too.. In recent years they have seemed to disappear. Does this one give you the quarter back when your done? Ours did.
acuerdate de coger monedas cuando vayas a comprar jejej
Is it because you only carry hundred dollar bills in your wallet? Those probably don’t stuff well into the coin slot.
Seriously???? What a way to make a few bucks.
At Superstore and Extra Foods it’s $1!
You do realise it’s because of all the idiots who use the cart to walk their groceries all the way home, keep the cart then sell it for a nice profit? Every trip to the store.
those things cost the stores ridiculous amounts of money- around $500 each . they are only making sure people bring it back to get their quarter back. On this other end of Canada (Nova Scotia), there are locks on the wheels so they can’t leave the parking lot.
Here in the UK, we can get keyrings with a blob on the end, the size of a pound coin (our carts are more expensive). Like these: http://www.poundforlife.co.uk/. Do you not have anything simlar over there?
I never heard of this before. With my luck the cart would get stuck to the one in front of it and I still wouldn’t get a cart.
I live in a tiny town in North Carolina and we have a grocery store that does the same thing! Aldi is the name of the store-I love it-great bargains for excellent foods!
The only store I’ve seen do this in the USA is the Aldi chain.
Jorge,
Yah I know its annoying but the old Canadian grocery carts required a hockey puck instead.
I think I actually love that idea! My worst pet peeve is people who don’t return their grocery carts, especially when the cart return is just a couple spaces away from their car but they’re still too lazy to put it away.
Uh-oh, kathycookiedough didn’t read the P.S.!!!
My husband and I shop at Superstore, which calls for $1 to borrow a cart, so we keep a loonie in the glovebox of the car. We have made a pact to not use it, and vigilantly police each other. (Want a coffee but don’t have any money? TOO BAD — don’t touch the grocery loonie! It is sacrosanct!) Whoever spends the loonie has to carry the baskets, so there’s a lot of incentive to ignore it, even when I need caffeine.
There’s only one store that sells 5 gallon water. They don’t allow the carts out of the store at all. The bag boy will bring the water out for me. Of course I have to give him a 1.00 tip so the .25 seems like a good deal to me.
Seriously, the cart thing would annoy me too…just like the airport.
My 7 year old LOVES these types of stores! If we go to one, he will wander around in the parking lot for an hour afterwards, grabbing all the carts and returning them so he can get the quarter back. Doesn’t matter if it is raining or the middle of a snowstorm. Me, I never remember to bring the quarter either.
Thanks for your post, Jorge. I went to my first store ever that had these just days after reading your post. I felt so smart knowing what to do! Your blog is not only entertaining, but educational!!
I live in New York and every super market in a 20 mile radius has this… I thought it was the standard these days… I didn’t know there were still free carts anywhere.
Maaaan. I never want to hear about how Canadians are more trusting again. Even in Florida, the Land of the Stolen Shopping Buggy, they don’t ask you to leave a deposit to do your grocery shopping.