CHICAGO, May 6 (UPI) -- First came the standard grocery cart -- wobbly, broken wheels, optional. Then came the cart with the infant seat attached to the basket and the motorized cart for those who could no longer navigate the aisles on foot.
The latest innovation is the kid cart -- a toy car-cum-shopping cart that keeps the kids occupied while the parents do their shopping.
McCue Corp. of Salem, Mass., and Supermarket Equipment & Supplies Inc. of Miami showed off the brightly colored baskets at the Food Marketing Institute, which runs through Tuesday at McCormick Place. Some 30,000 grocery industry representatives are expected to attend.
"They (children) don't want to get down," said Martha V. Celin of Supermarket Equipment. "There's no more whining and they're not pulling things off the shelves."
That's not the only kid-friendly innovation for the supermarket industry, which is struggling to recapture market share from discounters who have captured 28 percent of shoppers.
Kidzpace Interactive Inc. of Collingwood, Ontario, and Koala Corp. of Englewood, Colo., have teamed up to design 300-square-foot supervised play areas for the typical 27,000-square-foot supermarket where parents can drop off their 2- to 9-year-olds while they pick up a week's worth of groceries.
Koala's Larry Lipman said without the children fidgeting in the basket, shoppers tend to spend 20 percent more.
The play areas include plastic-molded climbing pieces and tactile games for the younger children as well as videogames, including X-Box and Nintendo, for the older ones.
"It makes it easier to do the grocery shopping," Kidzpace's Robert Ketchin said. The children are given wristbands for identification and the parents fill out forms that include such information as the child's birth date.
As a result, the play area can help build a marketing database that can be used for targeted promotions. In addition, grocers can get suppliers to subsidize construction of the molded pieces to promote their products.
Novelty was the watchword elsewhere on the show floor, with everything from Eiffel Tower-shaped displays for Perrier to a new twist on smoothies that incorporates tapioca to give the customer something chewy with a tea or fruit drink. Trojan Food Stuff Co. LTD of Taipei, Taiwan, is exporting Bubble & Pearl Drink to the United States. Spokesman Jane Chen, who owns a tea shop, said the drink is the most popular on Taiwan.
Most of what is new is packaging. Campbell's Soup introduced single-serving, microwaveable soups in a modified sippy cup, so there's no need for a spoon, and Sara Lee introduced crustless bread for those finicky enough to insist that crusts be cut off before they eat their sandwiches.
Pringles introduced chips in a cup for popping into brown-bag lunches while ConAgra introduced Tubular snacks -- Hershey's pudding and Jolly Rancher gel snacks, which come in a pouch that can be squirted directly into the palate.
Northland Cranberries Inc. of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., has taken its dried cranberries and covered them in chocolate -- milk, dark and white.
Cranberries -- one of the few fruits indigenous to North America -- are grown only in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey. Until recently, there was little market for them overseas but Northland's Bob Wilson said that has changed and exports have been growing exponentially in recent years.
"When you start at zero, it's easy to grow exponentially for a few years," he said.
