The Store of the Future 2025: Enhacing the Customer Experience

Moderated by Progressive Grocer magazine’s Emily Crowe, we are proud to have been on a panel of influential industry experts discussing the critical strategies grocers can adopt to stay ahead. Below, we present the transcript of our CEO’s presentation, offering you a chance to revisit the key takeaways and explore Brett’s vision for the future of grocery retail.

Emily Crowe: I would like to welcome Brett Nelson, CEO of The Peggs Company, to the virtual stage for a presentation. Brett, I will turn it over to you.

Brett Nelson: Today, I’m going to discuss the strategic role that your shopping carts play and how you can leverage them to significantly elevate your brand perception.

We’ve been around for 60 years. We’re designers and manufacturers of retail equipment, including shopping carts, material handling equipment, e-commerce equipment, produce displays, and a range of products for the grocery industry. We also have a network of technicians that service and repair shopping carts and equipment, as well as provide installations.

Elevating the Customer Experience

What Ethan touched on early in this discussion was the idea of how to get people into the store, how to keep them, and how to increase dwell time.

Retailers are taking tremendous steps to elevate their brands. They’re investing in décor, settings, signage, beautiful layouts, merchandise displays, and introducing prepared foods and cafes—lots of different mechanisms for attracting customers and enhancing the shopping experience for them.

That contributes to increased dwell time, which is extremely important because we all know that the longer a customer is in the store, the more likely they are to engage in impulse buying, resulting in higher transaction volumes. And if it’s a positive experience, it reinforces your brand identity and encourages customer loyalty, and I think that’s what we’re really after.

Unfortunately, in the shopping cart industry, carts have become a commodity, and it’s been a race to the bottom. Buying carts at the lowest possible price is a big detraction from a premium experience.

Effects of Store and Equipment Condition

Everybody’s investing money to upfit their stores and make them a premium destination. But the one asset that’s in your store with your name on it…if that interaction goes poorly, you’re not helping your brand identity.

Everyone can recall their emotions…going to a store and grabbing a shopping cart that’s rusted, with the squeaking wheel and the thumping sound that comes when the cart is being pushed down the aisle. Those are all reasons for a customer to hit the abort button and end their experience.

What we’re bringing to market — and what we’re working toward — is providing assets with your name on them to really leverage and make the experience more pleasurable.

Something that retailers can do to help prevent negative experiences, as Gino said, is to ensure that cleanliness is really important. There’s a direct link between cleanliness and freshness, which is why a good maintenance program is crucial for your shopping carts. Have the wheels changed before they become squeaky and a nuisance, and ensure that you’re using a professional shopping cart repair company that can adjust the alignment on the shopping cart frames. Most people don’t realize that it’s actually the alignment of the steel frame that causes these issues. If it’s out of alignment, the cart will pull and have a clattering wheel, making irritating sounds.

Also, things as simple as the plastics—ensuring that your plastics are in good condition, appropriate colors that are not faded, logos prominently displayed and legible. All these things reinforce brand image and brand expectation.

Plastic vs Metal Shopping Carts

We’ve launched a new series of shopping carts. It’s an all-plastic collection we call the Matrix Series. The benefit of these all-plastic parts is that we’re taking a shot at really trying to turn the industry on its head and present something that helps to drive that premium experience in that area.

The benefits of all plastic parts are that one, metal rusts. With steel parts, the number one reason for fleet replacement is poor aesthetics. When you don’t have rust, carts look better longer, you get a much, much longer life expectancy, more than all classic steel frames.

Premium Features

We’ve incorporated a number of valuable features that enhance the experience—cup holders, flower holders for fresh cut flowers, purse and bag hooks for your recycled bags, cell phone holders—all these things that make the experience more enjoyable.

And if you think about it, stores are using apps and loyalty programs that are encouraging the BYOD environment, but often they’re not taking the step of including a phone holder on their shopping cart. Another unique feature of the new carts is enabling stores to establish a brand image through their assets. We can run these parts in any PMS color. Whether your palette is wild and bright or conservative, any colors you can dream up, we can create these carts. That’s really important because it helps establish and make your shopping cart iconic.

Iconic, Customizable Branded Assets

Think of a time when you’ve been driving down the street and looked out the window to see an orange basket on a gray frame, and it immediately comes to mind. “Oh, that’s a Home Depot cart. There must be a Home Depot nearby.” And that’s iconic, right? All retailers now have access to a platform where they can create something unique that stands out.

And it helps reduce theft because when you have something as iconic and identifiable as your unique asset, it’s tough for someone to steal it, and for organized theft to sell it down the street to someone else.

What sets the Matrix apart is our ability to change the patterns on the basket to integrate your logos or anything that represents you into the basket structure, which makes your cart unique to you. We work with retailers to help develop these custom patterns. Once it’s molded into the side panel of the plastic, it can never be replaced or rebranded. It’s forever iconic of your brand. We’re manufacturing these carts in the U.S. We’re currently primarily manufacturing in Michigan, but we’ll be distributing from our three facilities and warehouses across the country.

Support Your Sustainability Initiatives

The Matrix carts are 100% recyclable, and we actively support recycling these parts through any of our seven facilities nationwide. We can even use that material to build more carts.

Emily C: Wonderful, Brett! Thank you so much for being here today and for the wonderful presentation. Yeah, thanks for having me. And thank you again to all of our speakers.

Access the complete Store of the Future Special Report.