Shopping carts that lock and security gates? Shoppers sound off on retailers' anti-theft tactics
This is what happens when you try to "save" money by forcing people to use self-checkout.
They can afford these insane security measures, and buying all the equipment that goes with it, but lowering prices? Paying their employees more? No no, that's too much money.
I get when a company puts wheel locks to ensure carts don't leave the property, believe it or not, buying new carts is quite expensive; each one is several hundred dollars and the store likely has nearly 100 of them, if not more. It's not a cheap asset. I get that.
Loss due to theft is also a non-trivial problem for obvious reasons, though there's plenty of loss due to damage, best before expiry, bad handling by workers, defective products, etc.
I've worked in grocery and every store I worked at had a bin on a pallet overflowing with damaged or otherwise unsellable stuff. It happens.
But, criminalizing your shoppers? The vast majority of them are people who live local, and are regular shoppers spending thousands a month on products. In business, this is the 80/20 rule. 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients (the ones who shop there regularly). I'm betting for grocery stores, that number is a bit different, but the concept stands. Start alienating those regular shoppers, and they will walk, and 80% of your sales get flushed down the drain as a result. It's both shocking, and completely unsurprising to me that Loblaws doesn't seem to understand this.
maybe hard for some region or if your next store is another 20km away. I think those store probably rip off their local customer most.
Yeah, I live in a small town/city of 40k and there's 4 Loblaws stores and one save on, and save on is considerably more expensive than any of the other options so it's either give Loblaws money or stretch an already limited budget to give even more money to a different company. Lose - lose for me. There's a Wal mart but they have 4 shitty aisles of packaged food a pathetic selection of food so they don't count for groceries up here for the most part.
The reason they aren't responding on social media is they recently fired a friend of mine who worked as their social media manager. She was the only person I know who refused to say anything negative about Galen Weston. I personally think they're adopting a policy of ignoring everything the public says about them and fucking us all as hard as they can until the government steps in. Stop giving them your money!
They believe in the Ivory Tower model of accountability: let people say what they want but under no circumstances will they respond to any criticism.
They can keep saying "Let them eat Weston Foods brand cake" because there are no guillotines in sight.
Anti-theft or not, these strategies absolutely deter me from spending more money in these places.
It's incredibly frustrating that a simple errand run feels like you're travelling through a maximum security airport. The only thing missing are armed guards.
I went over to my local Loblaws today and while they had added a gate at the store entrance right after the second automatic doors, now they added ANOTHER gate BEFORE those doors. What's next, a moat with sharks? Holy shit.
I've never seen security gates (at least anything more than the basic magnetic beeping ones), but locking shopping carts are a must. Hundreds or even thousand dollar equipment get stolen even a few times a year can seriously hurt a store's viability, and I used to see stolen carts everywhere before locking wheels were invented. Half the time, it wasn't even to be used personally, but because someone just wanted to use the cart to carry their groceries all the way home, then dumped the cart on the side of the road to rot afterwards, only to do it again the next week. This extreme was not common, but I did see it as a child.
And at my store, security guards have become mandatory, if only to protect against stealing beer. I think the guards catch a dozen people trying every week. When they were fired hired, I heard a story that most of the people they caught weren't even homeless. One of them was a pensioner who was doing it only for fun. Some old woman who wanted the adrenaline rush because she was plenty wealthy, but bored.
On the flip side, they generally ignore regular shoplifting as long as the product isn't expensive, and I've heard one guy who grabbed a shoplifter, only to take out the beer and leave the food in the guy's bag after kicking him out of the store.
There are serious issues going around, but putting the blame purely on corporate greed is unfair, as they're not the reason why there's so many desperate people about these last few years.
I will more than happily use self checkouts over waiting for a cashier, we only have so much time in this life and i refuse to waste it standing in line.
Maybe, but technically the company is getting free labour out of you. if you are fine with your labour being free then continue on and enjoy
Ist shopping on the sales floor free labor. Back when you would hand your shopping list to a worker and the would give you all your stuff. (funny enough online pickup has kinda brought that back). Things change over time
As far as I'm concerned time is worth far more than money, money only has value because people give it value.
do the order online thing(for anything that's not fresh product), so they have to hire people do the shopping, scan, and bag/box and you just go pick up. (it's mostly free atm for pick ups just need to be above certain amount of dollar spent.) So you go, buy fresh product, then go pick up the bagged ones.
People need to stop shopping at Loblaws owned chains. I know it's difficult because they own practically everything.
The quality of their produce and meats are always the worst.
I refuse to buy their meats..almost every butcher near me has 200% better quality, and is near the same cost. There is zero reason to buy their bland non marbled meats.
Yeah their produce are always nearly rotting and so small. There's a producer store nearby that had 1000% better fruits and veggies, that come from local farms mostly too.
I don't know how much better it is but I've been mostly patronizing my local Food Basics, with the occasional trip to Walmart and Costco for things they don't carry at FB. I avoid the Loblaws' chains after it became obvious they were doing the biggest price-hikes to drive inflation while Food Basics was raising wages and giving more of their employees full-time benefits.
I realize that Walmart is ethically a damned sight worse, but one battle at a time. Walmart doesn't give a shit what their Canadian customer-base does they're a global company. Loblaws lives and dies by it.
I've been doing the same. Its a slightly longer walk to food basics than the nearest loblaws chain but it is worth it. I get paper wasting flyers for both stores in my mail every week and everytime the food basics flyer offers better prices for the same foods like produce or meats.
I really like your approach of where you take your grocery business!
Yep, I've made the extra effort to shop at farmers markets and local butchers. A bit more money and less selection, but worth it in terms of helping locals and food quality.