I just got back from a bit of shopping at our local Albertson's. I haven't been to this particular store in a while, and I noticed that in my absence they had joined the crowd and put loads of stuff behind locked cabinets. This led to the following conversation while I was checking out:
ME: Is shoplifting really that bad?
CHECKER: Oh yeah.
ME: Even here in . . .
CHECKER: I know, even here in Irvine. [Note: Irvine is a famously low-crime, upper-middle-class place.] But you have to remember our location.
ME: Irvine?
CHECKER: We're right off the freeway. People from LA come down here to steal our stuff. They hop off the freeway and then right back on, and nobody stops them.
ME: That's really a thing? Is it worse than it used to be?
CHECKER: Yeah. It's a little inconvenient, but people also complain about prices going up. That's because of theft.
ME: That was because of inflation.
CHECKER: No, theft.
ME: It was inflation. Everything went up.
CHECKER: Well, the first time it was inflation, but the next time it was theft.
ME: ???
Obviously the folks at Albertson's know their business better than I do, and if they say theft is up, then I suppose theft is up. But did they really raise their prices because merch was heading out the door to hoodlums from LA?
Nothing seems to add up. Grocery Dive summed up the latest concerns of supermarket managers from a recent industry report:
More investments in promotional spending ... expand space for fresh departments including foodservice ... Labor remains a tough area ... boost the retention of full- and part-time workers ... healthcare costs ... training costs, which typically average more than $600 per employee.
Not a peep about theft. It apparently doesn't even top $600 training costs as something on the mind of grocers. Here are net profit margins for the industry:
This is national, and maybe stores near freeways have it worse. Who knows? But it sure doesn't look like increasing theft had a noticeable impact on margins, which have been rising slowly but steadily for years.
I'm still intensely puzzled about all this. Stores know that locked cabinets are a pain in the ass, and they wouldn't install them unless they felt a pressing need. But nothing seems to back this up. Shoplifting reports haven't increased outside of a couple of cities. Self-reported shrink hasn't increased. Margins haven't declined. What's going on here?
POSTSCRIPT: Do supermarkets keep track of inventory shrink as a line item? Of course they do. So why do we have to rely on surveys and such? Can't Kroger and Publix and Food Lion and all the rest just tell us what it is? Is this really a highly confidential trade secret?
A good bit of shrinkage is employee theft. Are they locking out customers or their own workers? Does Albertson's pay a livable wage for the area?
A) After the election we just had, you really claim not to understand/be surprised by people being driven by irrational vibes and what they "just know to be true" rather than by hard data?
B) I dunno what the shoplifting numbers are in Irvine (or up here in northeast LA), but I know this: If a store locks stuff I want to buy in a cabinet, and doesn't hire/schedule enough people to respond to requests to open the cabinets... I ain't gonna shop there.
Though I have no evidence for shoplifting, since the end of lockdowns I have personally seen far more crazy driving as well as more aggressive folks (seemingly unhoused) on public transit than I ever have in my life.
I don’t know how these would really be quantified, but the “disorder” crap feels very real to me and I can understand if it’s playing a role in our politics right now.
My experience is that those "crazy drivers" are, to a noticeable degree, MAGAts Rolling Coal in large diesel pickups and their harridan Soccer Mom wives in equally giant SUVs. Trump has made rudeness -- even to a deadly degree -- de riguer for his minions.
Is it morally wrong to Pray for a hortible person to have a four-chamber thrombosis and fall dead in forty-eight seconds?
All the worst drivers I encounter are in Teslas.
Weirdly they overlap with the big truck guys in that they have money to burn.
But Teslas are just super-common so it!s like being rear-ended by a Honda or Toyota: an expected outcome.
I see a lot of these nutjobs, and the mix of vehicles pretty much matches the overall population. The stupid pickups and giant SUVs are more noticeable, because stupid pickups and giant SUVs are more noticeable.
I surmise it's a secret they want to keep from shareholders, who would demand to know what they were doing about it. Especially if it was worse than competitors'. It's the kind of information a trade association should be trusted to collect and release without identifying invididual members' data.
Why would you think the cashier knows why prices are the way they are? They're likely reacting to what they have first hand experience, which is theft.
They're likely repeating what their manager told them the regional manager told them about what some wingnut executive told him.
Like +5.
Like +10
Very unlikely they have much experience at all with it.
Is that a California thing? There's some stuff locked up at the stores here, but it's relatively few items and pretty much what you think would be locked up: video games, computers, phones, mobile chargers/plugs/etc (and not even all of those), and so forth. Nobody is locking up tools, clothing, groceries, or anything like that.
Rather than locking everything up, it seems like it would be easier just to have someone at the door check receipts like at Costco. Same person could stop someone if they run past the door with stuff from coming in again.
I have seen it at a Target in Seattle.
It’s been a long time since I worked retail but I do work in transit now and I would be surprised if anyone on payroll is allowed to physically “stop” anyone from entering or exiting. Maybe a rent a cop could. But a regular employee? Nope. Next thing you know, the shoplifter stabs the employee or the employee injures the shoplifter, and the store has a multimillion lawsuit that dwarfs years’ worth of faregate jumping/shoplifting. We prohibit anybody employed by us except the cops from confronting fare cheats, and I wouldn’t be surprised if national retailers do the same… and cops earn way more money than your regular staff do per hour, which limits us to renting cops for high crime areas only.
Target in Minneapolis locks up socks. I just order for delivery...
In Baltimore I saw just one store (a RiteAid that had been looted several times in the middle of the night) lock up ordinary items. Walmarts and Targets only locked up stuff that's usually locked up: jewelry, colognes, electronics. I have a hard time believing other cities have worse theft rates than Baltimore, where stealing is no common I joked that they must give courses in Larceny 101 in the schools. The easiest way to get rid of something you don;t want there is to set it outside and it will be gone within the hour. And don't get me started on the porch pirates.
If you're shopping at the same Minneapolis Target that I do (on New Brighton Blvd), they also lock up underwear.
At a Vons in Southern California, I cannot purchase toothpaste or hand soap or q-tips without getting someone to open the different locked cabinets and take my purchases up to the front until I get to the cash register. Really annoying. Because I have to wait. In the aisle. For someone to come so I can point out what I want. Maybe I'll just go to the CVS instead.
CVS? Better bring a crow bar then, if you don't want to wait.
Much of the stuff in little boxes and bottles is locked up at the Walgreens, the Targets, the CVSes, the Smiths, and the Albertsons in Albuquerque.
The local Smiths had earlier gone one further: they built "unreachable shelves" on top of every shelf unit. Deliberately so ... signs note that you must get a staff person to get the merchandise down for you. So you not only have to locate one and bring them over, they've got to rustle up a rolling ladder thing. If you're a person who likes to read labels and compare, forget it.
While I'm griping, the Smiths also had these tiny carts for awhile. They were great! They handled like sports cars, held as much as a usual small shopping run required, and were incredibly popular. Smiths got rid of them when they build their Unreachable Shelves, and replaced all the regular carts with battleship-sized megacarts.
It's just nonsense. There's no evidence of any of it being real except the locking up in random places.
The importance and knowledge of high people in low places notwithstanding, you were speaking with a checker. Not the store manager.
The main place I have observed stuff getting locked up is at drug stores. And what I noted is that brand name drugs, such as Zyrtec, are locked up, but the store-brand generic that is the same thing, is not.
That kind of suggests something to me, how about you?
But no, when I see this I move on to some place else to shop.
...and the elderly and young and poor without transit options are stuck.
Not that you can do anything about it, but that's the outcome.
now worries- I'm sure when Tweeto takes over, prices will plummet
And if they don't, it's Joe Biden's fault -- or maybe that deadbeat President Kamala.
If shoplifting is such an issue then it makes little sense for the industry to still be pushing self-scans, which increase shrink rates dramatically.
They have no choice. Their tiny gross margins have no room for more than a couple of checkers per store.
The self-scan queue at my local big box has three employees to manage and monitor the 20 or so kiosks.
That's three people who could be traditional cashiers.
I'm not even a person who dislikes self-scan — I prefer to bag my own — but something doesn't add up.
Most of the places around here end up with a ratio very similar to an actual counter because the number of customers getting through the line isn't more.
I am a lot more likely to shop at a place that has self-checkout. For those of us who are misanthropic introverts, not having to talk to anyone is a big plus.
I can share related employee gossip.
I live pretty close to the famous Walgreens in San Francisco where a guard shot a shoplifter last year. Basically everything but the candy and the greeting cards are behind shelf fences in there.
I know one of the cashiers there, she's been checking me out forever. And she pointed out that the installation of more shelf fences has coincided with shift reductions.
Could be sour grapes, maybe could be true-but-coincidence, but I seriously doubt it - if you're sincerely worried about shrinkage, staffing is obviously a huge piece of that.
But we know that a lot of retailers were lying. And we know that Walgreens was...call it deliberate in their messaging about shrinkage.
So to the extent that any normal people are getting worked up about this, perhaps they should be a bit less credulous.
I'd recommend the same for legacy media journalists, but their jobs depend on selective gullibility, so I won't waste my breath.
+1
The only thing I've seen locked up at a supermarket was a $700 bottle of whiskey on display like a trophy.
Only shopping the cheap booze stores, eh? I shop at stores (like Total Wine) where they have $3000 and up bottles of whisky. I can't afford that either. Or the $700 plonk. 😈
oh, this was a cheap supermarket with a really limited liquor aisle and it was stuck out in the middle of the floor in its bullet proof armored case.
At a convenience store in Portland, even the beer was locked up.
That's Portland West. Never been to Portland East ... Stephen King has made that whole territory too scary. Not to mention H.P. Lovecraft.
I live in downtown Los Angeles and the Walgreens and CVS in our neighbotrhood closed during Covid, and the clerks solemnly told us it was due to shoplifting.
Of course later I read that both stores were closing nationwide due to slumping brick and mortar sales.
I don't know who told those clerks that- was it just an urban legend, or were they instructed by management to say that? I don't know.
But I know it was a lie.
And here's the funny thing- the CVS store a few blocks away is open, but they replaced their checkout counters with self-service kiosks, and have just one roving employee standing near the door watching people coming and going.
But the kiosks are right near the door, and since no one is checking receipts, it just screams for people to just walk out without paying.
The only thing I can conclude is that the payroll savings of fewer staff is worth the extra shoplifting loss.
There's a 100% guarantee that the checker has no idea why prices went up.
+1
It's weird how your graphs show a 1 percentage point increase in profit margins (a forty percent increase in profits?), which, according to you, had absolutely no affect on inflation.
...where did Kevin ever say that wasn't a contributing cause?
"Obviously the folks at Albertson's know their business better than I do, and if they say theft is up, then I suppose theft is up."
This is unnecessarily credulous of you, there is no reason whatsoever to accept this. The checkout workers are just parroting what their managers are telling them, and the managers are parroting what the regional head office is telling them. None of the lower-level workers have access to actual numbers or statistics.
Anyway, the Albertson's nearest me (Los Feliz, in Los Angeles) is in a pretty high-income area, about a mile and a half from the nearest freeway (in other words, not nearby) and has also locked up all toiletries and medications behind cabinets, which means it's a chain-wide thing. And the appropriate response is to say, clearly Albertson's doesn't want to sell these items, and I am more than happy to do my part and buy that stuff elsewhere.
+1