From Baskets to Carts: How the Humble Shopping Cart Came to Be

Life Before the Shopping Cart

 Sylvan Goldman in later years – the Oklahoma grocer whose inventive idea transformed retail shopping.

In the early 1930s, grocery shopping was a very different affair. Shoppers either handed their list to a clerk, or, in the burgeoning new “self-service” markets, they carried small handheld baskets to collect goods. It was an era of transition: supermarkets were emerging as a new concept, fueled by rising car ownership and other technological changes. People could drive to bigger stores and buy more in one trip – at least in theory. In practice, once a shopper’s basket was full (or too heavy), that was the limit. Many customers would simply stop shopping when their basket filled up or became cumbersome. In those days before the wheeled cart, one’s purchases were literally limited by what one could lug around.

Sylvan Nathan Goldman, an observant and ambitious grocery store owner, witnessed this problem daily. Goldman co-owned the Humpty Dumpty and Standard supermarket chains in Oklahoma City, and he noticed customers’ baskets hit capacity long before their appetites for shopping did. Shoppers would either head to the checkout or even leave the store rather than struggle with an overloaded basket. Ever the entrepreneur, Goldman wondered: what if shoppers had two baskets instead of one, and on wheels so they wouldn’t have to carry anything at all? Legend has it that one night in 1936, he drew inspiration from a simple folding chair. Together with a mechanic named Fred Young, Goldman fashioned a contraption by attaching two wire baskets to a folding chair frame with wheels, creating what he called the “folding basket carrier”. It was the first true shopping cart: a metal frame that could hold multiple baskets and roll effortlessly down the aisle. Goldman believed that if customers could push around more groceries, they would buy more, a win-win for shoppers and storeowners alike.

Goldman’s invention debuted on June 4, 1937, at his Humpty Dumpty supermarket in Oklahoma City. He launched it with fanfare, advertising a novel “No Basket Carrying Plan” to entice shoppers with the promise of effort-free shopping. The stage was set for a retail revolution, but the reaction Goldman got was not exactly what he hoped for.

The First Shopping Carts Roll Out and Shoppers Balk

To Goldman’s surprise, customers didn’t embrace the shopping cart right away. In fact, it was a bit of a flop at first. When the new carts were unveiled, many shoppers reacted with amusement or downright ridicule. Men scoffed at the contraptions, proudly insisting they were strong enough to carry their own baskets without help. To a number of male shoppers, needing a cart was akin to admitting weakness and pushing one around felt almost emasculating. Women, on the other hand, had different reservations. To their eyes the strange new cart looked uncomfortably like a baby carriage, and many a lady reportedly quipped, “I’ve pushed my last baby buggy!”, refusing to wheel one around the store. Even some older shoppers were hesitant, feeling that using a cart was an embarrassing concession to infirmity or age. The result? Most customers simply ignored the carts and continued to carry their old familiar baskets, leaving Goldman’s invention standing idly by the door.

Goldman, watching shoppers shun his creation, was frustrated but not defeated. He had anticipated some resistance, change can be hard, after all, and he was ready to get creative. In a witty bit of showmanship, he ran a newspaper ad (just a week after the carts’ launch) boldly, if prematurely, declaring that the new no-basket system had been “met with instant approval” by the public. (It hadn’t, really, but Goldman figured a little optimistic fib might pique customers’ curiosity.) Still, clever ads alone weren’t solving his problem. He needed shoppers to actually see the carts in action and realize what they were missing.

Winning Over the Skeptics: A Theatrical Twist

Goldman’s next move could have come straight from a comedy or a psychology textbook or perhaps both. He decided to stage a bit of theater right there in the grocery aisles. Goldman hired a crew of well-dressed young men and women to act as decoy shoppers in his store. These hired “customers” grabbed the shiny new carts and casually wheeled them around, filling them with groceries as they strolled through the aisles. Among them were even a few burly, “manly” gentlemen, included by Goldman’s design to counter the notion that carts were unmanly. The sight of these fashionable folks cheerfully pushing carts was striking. Real shoppers paused in wonder and crucially, they started to feel left out.

Psychologists today have a term for what Goldman was banking on: social proof. In essence, people are more likely to try something new when they see others doing it. Goldman’s aisle actors provided the perfect social proof. One by one, the real shoppers began to think, “Well, if everyone else is using those new carts, maybe I should too!”. The initial reluctance started melting away. Some curious customers tentatively took a cart; others followed, more confidently. Shoppers who once clung to their heavy baskets now discovered the joy of gliding from shelf to shelf with a cart carrying the load. As the store’s patrons saw the carts being used without anyone losing their dignity, indeed, even looking rather smart doing so, the shopping cart finally began to catch on.

“If They’re Using Them, Maybe I Should Too” – Social Proof in Action

Shoppers in the late 1930s using Sylvan Goldman’s new “folding basket carrier” carts at a Humpty Dumpty supermarket. Seeing others push the new carts helped convince skeptical customers to give them a try.

Goldman’s plan worked brilliantly. Seeing others confidently pushing the new carts made real customers more inclined to follow suit. Within just a few weeks, those once-ignored basket carriers became a familiar fixture in all of Goldman’s stores. The sight of shoppers effortlessly wheeling around a full cart of groceries soon looked not only normal, but downright sensible. Store employees were stationed at the entrances as greeters to hand out carts and explain their use to any newcomers who still looked puzzled or hesitant. Bit by bit, the peer pressure or shall we say, peer encouragement, did its job. The initial image problem faded away, replaced by a new norm: this is how you shop now.

Customers quickly discovered the practical benefits of Goldman’s invention. No longer constrained by what they could carry, people found they could gather a week’s worth of food in one trip. They could also browse more leisurely, since their arms weren’t aching from a basket. And the stores, of course, benefitted as shoppers started buying more items per visit than ever before. In September 1937, barely three months after the first cart’s rocky debut, Goldman felt confident enough to showcase his innovation at a national Super Market Convention. By 1940, a double-decker version of the shopping cart even graced the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, symbolizing how thoroughly it had entered the American mainstream. The turnaround was complete; the shopping cart had gone from oddball invention to overnight sensation (albeit after a slight delay and some clever staging).

A Shopper’s Revolution and Lasting Legacy

Thus, through a mix of necessity, ingenuity, and a dash of showmanship, the shopping cart was born and nurtured into acceptance. Sylvan Goldman’s once-ridiculed idea ended up transforming retail culture. Freed from the physical burden of shopping, customers could indulge in filling their carts, and supermarkets grew larger to accommodate aisles of abundant goods. Goldman, for his part, reaped the rewards of his invention’s success, he patented his folding basket carrier and earned royalties on carts used nationwide, becoming a multimillionaire in the process. But perhaps even more significant than the fortune he made was how his simple idea changed everyday consumer behavior. The shopping cart became an essential tool of modern shopping, a “lasting symbol of mass consumerism” in the 20th century.

Today, it’s almost impossible to imagine a grocery store without a row of carts by the door. What started as one man’s solution to a full basket changed the way we shop around the world. We load up carts in big-box stores, wheel them through supermarkets, and think nothing of it, a testament to how completely Goldman’s invention shaped retail habits. And it all began in 1937 with a clever grocer named Sylvan Goldman, who saw people struggling and thought to himself, there has to be a better way. In the end, his shopping cart did more than carry groceries; it carried us into a new era of shopping, where buying in quantity became convenient and routine. Not bad for an idea that once made people laugh, an idea that, as our narrator Bartholomew would note with a wink, proved that sometimes pushing a cart is the smartest way forward.

Sources: Historical context and invention details from History.com and Associated Food; initial public reaction and Goldman’s marketing tactics documented by History.com and contemporary accounts; social proof concept illustrated by Medium; modern retail impact discussed in historical retrospectives.