Simple Handlebar Clips Make it Easy to Bike Groceries Home

bike handle grocery bag carriers

Going grocery shopping can be a dangerous prospect when you’re planning to get home on a bike. Unless you’ve got a huge basket on the front or a trailer on the back, your only choice for carrying your bags home is to hang them on the handlebars. This, of course, is the dangerous part. The bags swing into the front wheel or hit your knees, potentially spilling your purchases or even causing an accident.

bag buddies

Brooklyn-based industrial designer Nicholas Fjellberg Swerdlowe came up with a simple but elegant solution to the bike shopping conundrum. The Bag Buddy is a little clamp that affixes to the end of each handlebar. The clamps tighten on the handlebars when bags are placed on them, getting more secure and difficult to knock off.

bag buddy

With bags hanging from the Bag Buddies, groceries tend to sway back and forth rather than side to side, greatly reducing the potential for groceries swinging into the front wheel. Each Bag Buddy can hold up to 30 pounds, so they’re strong enough to carry all of the weekly shopping.

bag buddy grocery bag clamps

Because the clamps sit close to the ends of the handlebars, there is always enough room for your hands to grip the handlebars securely. This orientation also gives ample knee room so that you don’t bash your knees into your cans of tuna and green beans. When you aren’t using the Bag Buddies, they conveniently clamp right onto the frame of the bike – or they’re small enough to fit into your pocket or backpack.

The Bag Buddy project is raising funds on Kickstarter for the initial tooling and materials needed for a first production run. A pledge of $20 gets supporters one pair of the handy little handles.

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See more in Industrial Design or under Technology. January, 2013.