These Carts Are Letting Kids With Disabilities Roll Down The Aisle In Style

This neighborhood grocer knows how to make its customers feel like royalty.

When Melody Leach had difficulty navigating her daughter's wheelchair through a Loveland, Colorado, supermarket, the store presented her family with a custom shopping cart fit for a princess . The cart, complete with a large seat adorned with flowers, bows and ribbons, can comfortably seat 2-year-old Beatrice, who has cerebral palsy, while Leach shops, KUSA reported.

Beatrice, who was born prematurely, has difficulty walking and speaking and has grown too large for a standard shopping cart’s toddler seat. As a result, Leach has been forced to push her daughter’s wheelchair with one hand while navigating a cart or basket with the other -- an experience that isn’t fair to Leach nor Beatrice.

“It’s always a trial to take Beatrice,” Leach told KUSA . “She hasn’t been able to experience the grocery store. [For] a lot of toddlers, that’s their favorite place to go.”

Hearing Leach’s frustration, Mike Myers -- assistant manager of the Loveland supermarket, King Soopers -- sought out a solution. He spoke with the store’s upper management who ordered a cart with an extra-large, forward-facing seat, called a “Caroline’s Cart .” The innovation was created by Drew Ann and David Long, the parents of a girl with special needs named Caroline. Their design is now used in grocery stores across the country and in parts of Canada, according to the Caroline's Cart website. 

While it was presented to the Leach family decorated with a glittery pink sign that read “Beatrice’s Cart,” the cart will now be available at the store for all parents of children with disabilities, according to the Reporter-Herald.

"It just makes the shopping experience better for this one shopper in particular and anyone who has special needs and needs that cart,” Myers told the news outlet . “Now, it's available for them.”

Grocery shopping will be one less challenge for the Leach family. And King Soopers plans to decorate the cart for different holidays, making each trip to the grocery store comfortable for every kid who takes a ride.

"The special cart allows her to relax,” Leach told the Reporter-Herald . “It's got a lot of support.”

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