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How To Keep Your Grocery Carts Food Safe

Friday, March 24, 2023 8:21 AM

How To Keep Your Grocery Carts Food Safe

People who shop at your grocery store expect their food to stay safe and free from contamination in your shopping carts. Plus, you wouldn’t want your carts to taint their food with germs that might make them sick. Read below for tips on how to keep your grocery carts food safe to ensure customers have no bad experiences with your store.

Clean Them by Hand

One way to make your shopping carts food safe is to clean them off by hand as often as possible. For example, you or your employees should use a washcloth and wet wipe to make a metal shopping cart shiny and sanitized again.

As you clean each cart, make sure that you wipe it off entirely, including its corners, basket, and child seat. Don’t neglect any portion since your customers will touch many areas of it during their shopping trips.

One area that you should especially not miss wiping off is the cart’s push handle. Customers can contaminate the handle with their hands as they shop, as can their children as they ride in the cart. This contact can make the handle one of the cart’s most bacteria-ridden areas.

Pressure Wash Your Carts

Another way that you can keep your grocery carts food safe is by using a pressure washer on them. Pressure washing offers you an effective and efficient way to remove dirt deposits and buildup from hard surfaces like your shopping carts.

In addition, pressure washing can help you sanitize your carts by killing the vast majority of bacteria that may be present on the carts’ exteriors. It also can help you preserve and extend the lives of your carts by removing surface rust. Thanks to the pressure washer, you won’t have to have them repaired or replaced as often.

A portable steam pressure washer is ideal for cleaning your fleet of shopping carts. It allows you to sanitize your carts without using chemical or cleaning solutions. Instead, it uses high heat against contaminants while also allowing you to thoroughly clean hard-to-reach places.

Alternatively, if you use a cold pressure washer, you may need to buy a cleaning solution to help you sanitize your shopping cart. Look for ones that are eco-friendly and do not have any soap or chemicals in their ingredients.

Make Sure Your Dry Off Your Carts

After you wash your carts, you must dry them off before returning them to the floor. Although you may have just used a pressure washer to remove all dirt from the cart, the wet surfaces can still act as transfer points for viruses and bacteria. This can start the contamination process all over again.

This contamination can happen even if you have one of your employees do something simple, such as washing off the push handle before returning the cart to the floor. If the handle is wet, it can enable the cart to become contaminated more easily. Therefore, it is better to wait for your carts to dry before putting them back into the hands of customers.

Fortunately, you don’t have to wait for carts to air-dry, unless you want to. Instead, you can have your workers dry the carts manually before returning them to the floor. Another method is to start using a disinfectant that can dry quickly. If you take these extra steps, you won’t undo the hard work your employees just did to make the carts cleaner. Instead, you can help slow the rate of contamination that the carts experience over time and get them back out on the floor quickly.

Repair or Replace Broken Shopping Carts

It’s also a good idea to pay close attention to the condition of your shopping carts to keep them food safe. Examine them regularly to see if they have experienced severe damage that requires fixing or replacement.

After all, you don’t want a broken wire on a cart to puncture a customer’s food packages or your cart to get rust flakes in their food. As you inspect your carts, look for broken wires and loose or bent handles. Focusing on these areas will help keep your customers’ food safe and increase your chances of earning their loyalty.

Encourage Cleanliness Among Your Customers

Now that we have covered everything you can do to keep your carts cleaner, let’s look at what your customers can do to help. Nowadays, many stores leave cleaning wipes at their entrances, so customers can use them on their carts.

However, it is wiser not to do that in your store. Although many customers may use them to clean off their carts, they may weave the wipes on the floor of your store instead of in your garbage cans. This unnecessary waste can make your store look rather messy and leave a bad impression on customers.

Instead, try using a technique that results in far less waste: install hand sanitizer stations throughout your store. These stations will allow visitors to clean their hands before they take carts and during their shopping experiences. In addition, the sanitizer stations will eliminate the potential for paper waste.

You can also ask your customers to wash their hands in your store’s public restroom before they use your carts or baskets. That will also help your store by reducing the number of germs customers can transmit with their hands.

Lastly, another way you can reduce contamination on your carts is by asking parents to keep an eye on their children as they give them a ride around your store. Babies and toddlers often lick or chew on the handle of carts, but if the parents do a better job of monitoring their behavior, they can reduce germs.

Following these steps to make your grocery carts more food safe will make your customers feel more confident about shopping in your store. And if you’re looking for quality shopping carts for your locations, contact us at Carriage Trade Service. We have a wide selection of products to help you make shopping better for your customers. Shop with us today!

How To Keep Your Grocery Carts Food Safe

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