Aldi in the USA uses a coin system on their carts, you insert a quarter to unlock the chain. It's not so much about theft, if someone wanted a cart, a quarter is a cheap price to pay. They do it so that people bring the carts back to the corral at the front of the store to get their quarter back, instead of leaving them in the parking area. That way, the store doesn't need to hire someone to go out and gather the carts every 15 minutes.

In my view it's quite an inconvenience: who carries quarters around anymore? I rarely have any cash with me, let alone loose change.

I expect we'll soon see something where you make a small payment with your card or mobile pay app which is rebated when you return the cart.

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rockfishroll 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think this solution also misses the fact that certain kinds of people (like bored kids) will walk through fire for a free quarter. It's not even the money, it's the novelty. So if you have a population of people who consider the charge 'the cost of shopping' and don't care enough about 25 cents to return the cart, you still have a whole other population of people who will hunt them down and return them for those people.

As a kid, I almost missed a flight while hunting luggage carts at the airport.

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pavel_lishin 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

In the local Aldi, it's not bored kids - it's usually unhoused folks who don't particularly have any other way of making money. Pushing carts around the small Aldi parking lot isn't a great way to make a living, but it presumably beats shaking a coffee cup in the middle of an intersection or walking around the entire town collecting plastic bottles or aluminum cans.

I'm sure they don't make much, but it's more than zero.

	▲	c22 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Definitely beats sucking coins out of the subway turnstile: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/subway-token-suckin... (Alternate link: https://archive.is/dyeND) * I think I remember reading about this on hn but I can't find the thread, sorry.

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EvanAnderson 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I think this solution also misses the fact that certain kinds of people (like bored kids) will walk through fire for a free quarter.

This. Soda bottle deposits when I was a kid.

(Heck, even now. Who am I kidding? My state doesn't have them anymore, but I still vacation in places that do, and I still keep an eye out for bottles and cans.)

	▲	bookofjoe 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Finding discarded Coke bottles and returning them for the 2-cent deposit in 1959 in Milwaukee in the stockyards was my sole source of income. On a good day I could make 25-50 cents. That was real money! Hershey bars cost 5 cents.

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bityard 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> who carries quarters around anymore?

My car has an Aldi Quarter stashed inside that my family knows never to spend. It is only for Aldi shopping carts. I joked with my kids once that my Aldi quarter was older than them and that I've used the same quarter for the shopping carts since before they were born. They called my bluff at the checkout of course.

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rtkwe 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Don't even fully push the transaction through, that'd cost money on both the charge and the refund (and maybe get you in trouble with the card company because they don't like processing lots of refunds), just preauthorize/hold the deposit on the card and cancel that if the cart is returned.

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dmonitor 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> In my view it's quite an inconvenience: who carries quarters around anymore? I rarely have any cash with me, let alone loose change.

That's what incentivizes you to take your quarter back. I keep a quarter in my car's center console for Aldi and getting a new one is a hassle.

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miltonlost 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> In my view it's quite an inconvenience: who carries quarters around anymore? I rarely have any cash with me, let alone loose change.

I suspect that if you are going to be shopping at Aldi, you're planning on shopping there and it's not a random one-off, so you already know about the quarters and bring one with you.

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SoftTalker 4 days ago | parent [-]

I often don't. I'll be at work, and think "crap, nothing for dinner, I'll stop at Aldi on the way home." But no quarters, because I didn't leave the house with the idea of stopping at Aldi.

Aldi is nice for quick stops because they aren't that big, they have most of what you might want but it doesn't take 30 minutes to get through the store like Kroger.

I try to keep a quarter in the car, but it often ends up in my pocket after I return the cart and I forget about it. I should drill a hole in one and put it on my keychain. But it won't be too long before we don't carry keys anymore either.

	▲	c22 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I haven't carried keys for almost a decade!