Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Caroline's Cart Revolution with Drew Long
What happens when a mother's necessity becomes a worldwide movement? Drew Ann Long never set out to change retail shopping forever—she simply needed a way to shop with her severely disabled daughter Caroline. When she discovered no shopping carts existed for individuals with special needs, she faced a choice: accept the limitations or create something revolutionary.
Drew Ann's journey from sketching a cart design at her dining room table to securing international distribution reveals the extraordinary challenges faced by innovators working outside traditional corporate pathways. Despite emptying retirement accounts and facing rejection from every major shopping cart manufacturer, her persistence never wavered. "Anybody can point out a problem," she explains, "but who's going to throw their body on the grenade?"
The power of social media became her unexpected ally, connecting her with thousands of families facing identical struggles. Her strategic placement of just 88 carts across the country sparked a grassroots revolution, with families demanding access and threatening public shaming of retailers who wouldn't provide it. The result? Caroline's Cart now stands in every Walmart, Target, and Lowe's nationwide, serving not only the disabled community but also becoming an essential tool for families with autistic children and seniors who cannot safely operate electric scooters.
Beyond creating a product, Drew Ann built a movement that recognized the purchasing power and essential needs of what she calls "the world's largest minority group." Through her nonprofit Caroline's Cause, she now provides scholarships to families raising both special needs and typical children, completing a circle of advocacy that began with a simple need to shop with her daughter.
Discover how one mother's refusal to accept limitations transformed retail accessibility worldwide and created new possibilities for millions of families previously forced to choose between staying home or facing impossible shopping experiences.
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I've got a very special guest with me today. Her name is Drew Ann Long and she is the founder of Caroline's Cart, and it is really the only shopping cart available for special needs projects, and we're going to learn a lot today about a feature you know. More and more we talk about technology and applications and things that sort of stray outside my original vision with this podcast, which was, you know, healing techniques and things like that. But it turns out we live in 2025, and there's all sorts of tools and resources that can help people that have compromised situations in this world. And, without any further ado, welcome to the show, thanks.
Speaker 2:Excited, happy to be here. Thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and Caroline's cart, and I'm so interested to be here. Thank you, I appreciate it. Beautiful. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and Caroline's cart, and I'm so interested to learn here.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks. I'm a married mom of three. I live in Alabama. I have three adult children now, but back in the day when my children were young, I shopped often and I have a severely disabled child. My middle child, named Caroline excuse me was born with severe disabilities, genetic, lifelong. Doesn't walk or talk, never has, never will. She's now almost 25. And I found myself, you know, shopping all the time and I would use the shopping carts that retailers provided Lots of options fun carts, fire trucks, all the things for the toddlers and I used those. And when she outgrew those I went to my store manager and I said hey, we're in small town Alabama. I'm sure there is a specialty shopping cart. Would you mind buying it for me? My husband traveled for a living and I got to bring her in and it was just too difficult to bring her wheelchair in my other kids and pulling the shopping cart and I'm like there has to be a special needs shopping cart. Well, lo and behold, there was not a special needs shopping cart.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I was really just shocked, and I thought the special needs population is the world's largest minority group. We are in retails, pharmacies, all the time. Our children have health issues. Why is there not a special needs shopping cart? And thus, 15 years ago, began my journey to change the status quo.
Speaker 1:So this is an actual physical shopping cart.
Speaker 2:Yes, here's a picture of it, right here.
Speaker 1:Oh, in my mind this was some sort of an application thing.
Speaker 2:So you, know it's a physical product right here and you can see it when you go out. I mean, we are everywhere. Here's the backside of it. It's just, you know, it's just a larger seat for the older child and adult and senior adult that you know might have dementia and cannot drive the electric scooters. It's a very simple design, a very simple product that is now in every single Walmart in the nation, no kidding, congratulations, good job.
Speaker 2:Last year I was flown out to Bentonville, arkansas. Walmart had said no for years and years and years. But last year, in 2024, walmart did a nationwide rollout of Caroline's Cart into every single super center and neighborhood market in the United States. So they're kept right in the front of the store. If you see the wheelchairs and the electric scooters, you will now see several of these for their special needs customers.
Speaker 1:Now I don't spend a whole lot of time at Walmart, but I'm going to go down there to our local one and I'm going to go and shoot a picture of one.
Speaker 2:You will see it. We're also in every Target nationwide, every Lowe's Home Improvement nationwide. If you have Lowe's near you, yeah, we do. We have all those, yeah. So yeah, if you have Lowe's near you, yeah, we do we have all those yeah? So yeah, we're there, you can see it.
Speaker 1:I'll do a local audit for you and let you know what I find.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. So now this is a completely different conversation than I thought we were going to be having. I thought this was some sort of an electronic cart thing and my mind had gone to a totally different direction. So now that I understand what we're dealing with, how did you go from an idea to manufacturing, to distribution? I mean, this is like a whole life.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so let me set the scene. You know, I have a college degree in business, I worked in accounting, had my three children. Life was great. When my middle child was around three, I realized, with her severe disabilities, I was going to have to quit. So I found myself a stay-at-home mom with three littles and needing a product that did not exist. So I drew it on a piece of paper and I took my idea. There's four shopping cart manufacturers in the United States. I took my drawing to all four. I didn't want money, I didn't want to do it. I wanted them to do it. I didn't have time, I didn't know how. They all dismissed me, said there wasn't a need.
Speaker 1:So oh yeah, how does that even come about, you know? Oh yeah, wow. We've got a gigantic disability problem in the United States, from veterans to, like you said, all the way to dementia and everything in between.
Speaker 2:World's largest minority group. They just they weren't listening. They dismissed me. Had they walked 24 hours in my shoes, they would have snagged it. So here I am with this idea that no one wanted, but I believed in it enough to try to make a go of it. So you know, it took me years and years to get off the ground. Why is that? Because I didn't have the luxury of going to an office.
Speaker 2:I was a mom first. I had to do this when my kids napped, when my kids went to bed, and just try to figure it out, I'm like, okay, so how do I get this off of a piece of paper into a physical product? So yeah, it was years and years of work. I finally got my first prototype.
Speaker 1:A firm in Indiana built it for me. It was $28,000 and you couldn't sit in it. I had it in my dining room from scratch, but on such a small scale that I know for somebody like if I wanted to get a piece of equipment made unless I had a fabricator that it was simple enough. They could just, you know, bend a piece of steel for me or something it's. It's, it's a project. So you found some sort of a of a fabricator and you were able to give this design to. They were able to understand it well enough to do something for you.
Speaker 2:I drew it on paper. They took it from paper to an actual physical cart.
Speaker 1:Got it and that cost you $28,000 out of your pocket.
Speaker 2:Out of my pocket. Now our savings is gone. I drove up to Indianapolis. I picked it up, loaded it in the back, took all the seats out of my minivan, brought it home, took pictures of it in my dining room and started social media. If it was not for social media, we wouldn't be having this conversation today, because it was the only avenue I had. I was not corporate America. Corporate America should have done this. I took it to them. They shot it down, so created social media, and the instant I went to social media, I had and I am not kidding thousands of emails. Week one asking me where they could shop with this cart, really. Week one asking me where they could shop with this cart because, oh, it just exploded week one.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my goodness, I only have a prototype in my problem yeah now I had a different problem, but, but, but I needed that community, that grassroots effort. That is what number one reassured me that this was a need, that this was not crazy. I knew that it wasn't, but I needed this grassroots momentum and effort and support from people all over the world who are wanting the shopping cart.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's more than just a need. So there's two elements to this, because I deal with people that have real needs but there's not an understanding of there's a solution available, and so To get that message, social media can be very instrumental in that, because people are paying attention to social media. Right, I'm not that good at social media, so even though I throw things up there, it doesn't get grabbed the way. But you had a particular type of product that reached a particular audience that they were able to embrace your idea in a meaningful way, because there was nothing out there that represented nothing nothing it's.
Speaker 2:It's one of a kind so after, you know, after I've created this demand, I'm in panic mode thinking how in the world now I need a manufacturer. But all the manufacturers told me no right so once I had my uh first prototype, I drove it I'm like, okay, there's four. That told me, no, I'm going to narrow it down to one. So I went to the largest, the best. The biggest it's in North Carolina. Every shopping cart you've ever touched comes out of North Carolina.
Speaker 1:All right yeah.
Speaker 2:Fun fact, now you know. So now I took my prototype to North Carolina and I'm like I'm back. So this is trip number two. Showed them my product. They told me no a second time.
Speaker 1:Nice, of course.
Speaker 2:Cried all the way home.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm like, well, this is going to be dead if I don't have I mean, I have to have a manufacturer, Right? So it took me another year about to hunt and peck and work on this from the ballpark, from the hospital room, from, you know, I had little kids and again, I'm doing this when I can in my, in my, in my spare time. I'm not corporate America. So I found a shopping cart man. Well, no, no, no. I found a manufacturer in Georgia that made the lumber carts for Lowe's, If you ever go get the big.
Speaker 2:You know big he's like okay, I this is kind of, this is in my wheelhouse, but not in my wheelhouse. I'll make you 100 carts. Really 100 cost me $100,000. Holy cow. So, Wow. Have no money. My husband and I had to go to our retirement, our 401k, which you are told to never, ever, ever, ever touch that. But we didn't have a choice. It was either fund this with our retirement or it was not going it was not going to happen.
Speaker 2:So that's what we did. I took the biggest risk that I mean I didn't think I was a risk taker, but I became the ultimate risk taker. So I had 100 carts. I like, what am I going to do with these 100 carts? Now, mind you, I've got patents. I mean, I've got patent fees, patent attorneys, all the things. So you know, I'm well more into debt than $100,000.
Speaker 1:Overall, I would say yeah, I know Patents can be very expensive. And then there's a giant problem with patent attorneys. Sometimes they steal your idea.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, they didn't steal mine. I was blessed with that, but I am hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt grading our 401K. So now I have 100 carts. I go to Walmart Target all the big dogs and I show them my product and I tell them about them. They won't buy it from me. They said we only buy from the shopping cart manufacturer in North Carolina, Of course, and I'm I didn't have the guts to tell them. They told me no twice. I said oh great.
Speaker 2:So cry for a couple of months. I'm like, okay, I've now have spent our entire retirement and no one will buy this. So I had to go a different route, and that route was the smaller, locally owned mom and pop stores is what I call them.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So the ones that don't have the bureaucracy that really no one's ever heard of.
Speaker 1:Right, so Don't necessarily care about that. One company in North Carolina.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right so well. They actually did buy those shopping carts from North Carolina, but they also took a chance on me.
Speaker 1:Well, they didn't have a contract that said we're going to only buy it from you. That's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right. So I literally got a map out and I thought well, I need to seed the market with these 100 carts. Let me back up there was only 88 carts because there was a fire at the manufacturer.
Speaker 1:Oh, of course there was Of course there was.
Speaker 2:I got none of my money back for those 12 carts, which was critical. That's a whole other story but.
Speaker 2:I now have 88 carts that I need to seed the market with, so I didn't want to seed the market only in Alabama. 88 carts that I need to seed the market with. So I didn't want to seed the market only in Alabama. I needed this to be a nationwide, grassroots movement. So I literally looked up mom and pop stores all over the nation and my first sale was in Sunset Foods, a locally owned mom and pop store that has five chains in Chicago.
Speaker 1:That was sale number one it's a long way from North Carolina. What's that? I said that's a long way from home. Yeah Well, and I'm in Alabama, right, that's right, right. Right, I'm in Alabama, so sale number one that's even longer away from Alabama.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So once I got that one cart cart number one in Sun foods I go to social media and I'm like, if you have special needs or senior adults here, go, go to this location yeah and take pictures and post that was cart number. That was cart number one so then, cart number two, I believe, was michigan, cart number three, I believe, was maybe out west. So it took me about a year to seed the market with the 88 carts.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this how much did you sell these carts for?
Speaker 2:I believe back in the early days they were around $900.
Speaker 1:So you sold it for cheaper than it cost you to buy it for, oh 100%.
Speaker 2:Oh, I made no money on this for-.
Speaker 1:No, no, I get it. I just want to make sure the listeners understand. Oh yeah, it was what you're going through because I it there, I do, I'm I. I create things from scratch as well, and I know all the yeah, the, the, the heartbreak and losses, everything that you deal with, and most of the time nothing comes of it. But when you're persistent like you are and you got that dream and the vision and the drive, we, we can make anything happen.
Speaker 2:You're showing that Well, none of this made sense financially, I mean we were losing money every single month. You know we just if it wasn't for our 401k, you know.
Speaker 2:I didn't work. My husband, you know, my husband was traveling and working and everything we funneled into this cart. So after about a year I had 88 carts strategically placed throughout the United States. The rumble has started People. I mean it's growing. I mean it took 88 carts. It's growing on social media it's growing. It's growing. About a year and a half I'm sitting at this exact same dining room table and my phone rings and it said North Carolina. I only know one person in North Carolina and that was a shopping cart manufacturer that told me no twice.
Speaker 2:I answered the phone and they said okay, we've got Walmart and Target and all the big dogs calling us saying we have rogue moms threatening that if we do not get it was awesome, it was epic, oh my God Saying if we don't get Caroline's cart, they're going to get the local TV station out here and they are going to publicly shame us.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:They said come up, it's time to talk. My third trip to North Carolina. I got a manufacturing, an international manufacturing contract.
Speaker 1:Holy cow.
Speaker 2:That's how it happened.
Speaker 1:Wow, I am blown away. Like that is true grassroots all happening without even your direction, like you weren't telling these people to do this, they were just doing it, right? Wow?
Speaker 2:It just proves the need. You know, anybody can point. Let me just say this to all your listeners it's very, very easy to point out a problem.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I talk about that all the time. Anybody can do that yeah.
Speaker 2:Who's going to throw? My husband always says anybody can throw the grenade, but who's going to throw their body on the grenade?
Speaker 1:Exactly. I share so many common experiences with you on totally different wavelengths and totally different things, but the heartbreak and the commitment and just somehow knowing that I'm just going to keep going, even though it makes no sense at all.
Speaker 2:Makes no sense. It is yeah.
Speaker 1:One beautiful thing I see here is that your husband supported you throughout all of this. 100% Right, and that generally doesn't happen, or seldom happens. Where those two people can stand together with the same dream, just about anything's possible and and, and that's huge. So kudos to your husband, who isn't standing there with you right now, but I know he's standing behind you.
Speaker 2:Oh, a hundred percent, couldn't have done it without the support of my family, of course. My husband he had to work. I mean, I was, you know, I felt like I was on an Island. So, yes, he was my cheerleader, but he worked for a big corporate America and traveled for a living. So I basically, during this, was a single mom during the week three littles, one severely disabled, that I was in and out of the hospital with all of the time trying to change the culture of retail shopping from my minivan, from my dining room table you know, just trying, and it was, it was.
Speaker 2:It was I don't. I don't know if I could do it again. I'm so glad. Yeah, I hear you, I mean had I known that we were going to, it cost a half a million dollars of our money to get this from a piece of paper to corporate America. Had I known that, would I have done it? Of course not Absolutely not but today. Today, Caroline's Cart is in eight countries. You know a couple of summers ago we sent a shipment to Dubai.
Speaker 1:So if any of your listeners are in Dubai.
Speaker 2:I sure would love pictures of Caroline's cart, because it's there.
Speaker 1:I love that. That is amazing. So I want to jump into the social media side of things, because I'm going to make a guess that, based on your demographic and the time that you're talking about, that Facebook was a piece of this Maybe Instagram and TikTok and so you were able to jump into an existing market. Facebook's been around for a long time, but these newer platforms that are being accessed by younger groups and people don't realize that. Don't realize that. You know people in our generation we've got, you know, kids, grandkids and all these things, but there's, you know, young parents in their twenties and thirties that have special needs, kids that are in the exact same boat that we are, and yet they're using whole different means of communication than many of us are even aware of. So you were fortunate to be able to tap into that and you said people were reaching out to you directly. So now you've probably got a direct message in an inbox that's just being flooded constantly.
Speaker 2:It was constant, it was so much Let me say this too it was so much pressure, but it was a good pressure. It was getting requests from, but it was a good pressure, you know it was. It was getting requests from all over the world, but I needed that, you know. I don't know if that makes sense. You know I cried a lot because it was so much pressure, but it was the pressure that encouraged me.
Speaker 2:It was like okay, yes, I mean, I can't pay my bills this month, but they need it in South Africa.
Speaker 1:I got to keep going. You know I completely get it. I worked with the civil rights nonprofit. I built one that I, you know, used for my own needs. But as I was paying back and traveling around the country helping other people and broke as hell, and still I'd have people call me up and say, I don't know this thing you said or this thing you did help my mom in a way that, like it changed her life. And I'm like, okay, I guess I'll keep going. You know, like 100%, 100%.
Speaker 2:You got to have that because you know it's a, you know entrepreneurship, you know challenging the status quo, especially in what I did, and it had never happened before. So it you know, and it just made it harder. And let me say this I created a product that the consumer wanted, but the consumer couldn't buy it. I had to. So I'm like I've got the entire world's largest minority group wanting this and they can't buy it I got to go to the retailer, which I thought would just be like oh yes, we want it, we want it, they didn't.
Speaker 2:It took.
Speaker 1:They didn't even see the need, though that's the crazy thing. They spend millions and millions of dollars on these people in advertising and market research and focus groups and all these things to find products for them to have, and they missed this one entirely.
Speaker 2:Entirely entirely. So it was a hard sell to these retailers and Caroline's cart was not something that they bought and marked up and made money on.
Speaker 1:Right, I came off the bottom line. Yeah, that was just a service.
Speaker 2:I came off the bottom line. So you know, millions of people create products and bring them to market and sell them to consumers. That was not me. I was the unicorn. I was, you know, find me another mom, dad that created such a needed product but nobody.
Speaker 1:But they could. They had to bypass the people group that wanted it the most much harder. Wow, this is a powerful story. As you're going along in your journey, before you had gotten a call back from North Carolina, were the people that you were connecting with telling you in any way that they were approaching these retail stores, quote unquote, threatening them? Were you even aware of this at all?
Speaker 2:100%.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I may or may have not encouraged them to do so.
Speaker 1:I'll never tell I love it. I love it. That's what I was hoping to hear.
Speaker 2:You know people don't realize. I don't have the stat in front of me, but I believe I know it's a trillion with a, I'm sorry, a billion with a, b the consumer. The annual special needs consumer spending is in the billions of dollars everywhere in the United States. We have money to spend. We are out in your communities. You cannot ignore this growing population any longer.
Speaker 1:So I became the voice. It's not like there's a discount special needs service either. For sure, anytime anybody has a medical or personal care need, that goes outside of the big box stuff made in Indonesia and China by the billions, the price is tenfold, twentyfold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100 percent. So you know, I was kind of the, I was kind of the leader behind this movement because it you know we are, we are highly overlooked and underserved and that had to change and I was leading that that change, you know, and again it was. It was the worst pressure, but it was, it was the greatest pressure because I knew they had my back. You know, I could not have brought this product to market without the millions of worldwide special needs families that supported me. And again, caroline's Cart was created for my daughter that is disabled. But let me say this the number one user of Caroline's Cart and I track all this is the autistic community. These are kids that walk just fine, but they're runners, they're overstimulated, they need to sit in. They're runners, they're overstimulated, they need to sit in. You know, they're adults, they need to sit in this to be secure and safe and not run off. The second largest user of Caroline's cart is the senior adult community.
Speaker 2:That was a demographic that was not on my radar. Not everyone can drive electric scooters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's so not everyone can drive electric scooters.
Speaker 2:What happens to?
Speaker 1:somebody. When they can't perform the normal functions, they get locked in a box. 100%, 100% it opens that door for them.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think those that use Caroline's card, that surprised me the most. My mom had cancer, I would take she had pancreatic cancer. It was tough, it was rough. I would take her to chemo and radiation right next door to a grocery store. Then I would then put her in Caroline's cart. She was so weak she couldn't walk and I could get her the things she needed. So I mean, I used it with my mom who was dying of cancer and I hear that all of the time it is the only thing that is out there for needs like that. It is not just for the special needs community.
Speaker 1:Well, I am absolutely going to be going to my Lowe's Target and Walmart and see if I can find that cart, and if I can't, I will let you know.
Speaker 2:Well, it's there. If it's not there, it's being used. Okay, yeah that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll go in the morning when they first, you know when they're probably all the carts are sitting there.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:If I can't track it down. So we're running up to that special time right now, and this show took a completely different twist from what my expectations were, even though we talked ahead of time. I was like I just it's. I you know it's crazy. I'm dealing with chemo myself. So as much as I never understood it before I went through it, it does scramble your brains a bit, and so you my mom used to call it chemo brain yeah, yeah, I do too.
Speaker 1:now people tell me that I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah sure, just suck it up buttercup. And I turned around, when it's when your brain swimming in it, you're just like, yeah, what's a buttercup.
Speaker 2:That's right for sure.
Speaker 1:So it's very humbling, but it's also good to be humble. So I I hope that they're giving you a beautiful royalty for for what you're getting, and I hope this turns out to give you back, you know, a thousand fold what you put into this. You're one of the few people that I know that deserves the beautiful wealth that so few people get, so I want to appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Just see all that and I support you in every way I could. So why don't you give us your parting shot, tell us that message you got so many I couldn't even begin to know which one you're going to pull out and then tell us you know once again how they can find you? Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, if you see my shirt Caroline's Cause. A couple years ago my husband and I started a nonprofit to give back to the community. That made Caroline's Cart possible. So we now have a scholarship fund called Caroline's Cause and we give college scholarships a one-time college scholarships to a family that is raising both special needs and typical kids. I am unable to fund them all. I get so many it's exploding. But you know I look for speaking engagements If any of your listeners floating. But you know I look for speaking engagements If any of your listeners you know I travel and I speak. My website is Drewannspeaks. That's D-R-E-W-A-N-N. Speakscom. You can find all you can find the CART information, the cause information and how do I fund my scholarships. I do that through speaking engagements. Anyone that gives to Caroline's Cause or hires me to speak, it is a nonprofit. You can pay this and get a tax deduction. It's like you're paying my honorarium to come speak and that's how I'll leave it. Drewannspeakscom.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. Well, drewann, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've enjoyed this conversation immensely. I want to thank you for joining our show and, if you ever want to come back and share some kind of an update about your nonprofit or any of this great work, I always welcome our guests that we have a good conversation. To come back and Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I would love to Beautiful, all right. Well, this has been another edition of the healthy living podcast. I'm your host, joe grumbine. I want to thank all the listeners that make this possible, and we will see you next time.
