Photo: Canva
Will Free Coffee for Cops Reduce Shoplifting?
In the United Kingdom, supermarket Waitrose and sister retailer John Lewis are offering free coffees to on-duty police officers as a way to counter the rise in shoplifting.
Nicki Juniper, head of security for the two chains, told The Guardian, “Even just having a police car parked outside can make people think twice about shoplifting.”
Both stores are also employing “love bombing,” which is when staff members actively engage with customers to ward off thoughts of shoplifting. “We’ve long been known for our friendly service, but it turns out that the more attentive we are, the less likely people are to steal,” Juniper told the Grocery Gazette.
In Australia, John-Paul Drake, who runs Drakes Supermarkets, has been using sarcastic videos on Instagram to shame those who steal from his stores.
A Bronx supermarket, Chang Li Supermarket, posts photos of shoplifters caught on their surveillance cameras. Matt Jiang, store manager, told the New York Post, “When they see their pictures, they never come back again.”
Stores are also making investments in security guards and surveillance cameras amid the spike in retail theft that’s being attributed largely to organized crime. In bigger cities, large parts of stores are being locked up, risking losing customers due to the added wait time for a store clerk to come and unlock a cabinet or product. Stories have emerged of a Duane Reade in Manhattan padlocking its freezer doors, a Walmart in Florida wrapping steak in security wire, and a San Francisco Target locking up toiletries and cosmetics.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Nordstrom, and Dollar Tree last week joined other chains, including Home Depot and Walmart, calling out margin pressure from theft on earnings calls.
“Losses from theft are at historical highs,” said Nordstrom CEO Erik Nordstrom on a call. “And I’d say we find it unacceptable and needs to be addressed.”
Ann-Marie Campbell, Home Depot’s EVP of U.S. stores and international operations, was hopeful that new laws would better police online sales of stolen merchandise but also called on “government partners to help on their end as well to help us in retail to really mitigate what we have seen out there.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What do you think of free coffee for cops, being extra attentive on selling floors, and public shaming as methods to deter shoplifting? What other measures outside locking up items do you see helping curb retail theft?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Zel Bianco
President, founder and CEO Interactive Edge
David Naumann
Marketing Strategy Lead - Retail, Travel & Distribution, Verizon
Like elsewhere, retail crime is a growing problem in the UK. By offering free hot drinks and discounted food to police officers on duty, Waitrose and John Lewis are hoping to attract officers into their stores. In theory, this presence should help deter some shoplifting. While I am sure it will only help at the margins, it’s nevertheless a creative solution to an important issue. It is also a nice gesture to thank the police for their work. And the fact someone has named the scheme “thanks a latte” made me smile!
Offering anything to foot patrol officers will help to the extent that the municipalities can afford to put additional officers on the streets. That will at least help to apprehend the culprits and recover merchandise if not altogether prevent theft.
All of these actions to deter shrink are good ideas and should all be implemented where appropriate. We all thought that e-commerce would be the demise of shopping in store but if we don’t turn this around, shrink may prove to be the last straw. Having items in the personal care aisle and the candle aisle locked up, as just two examples that are now commonplace, is no way to have a pleasant in-store shopping experience.
It’s a good idea to induce more police presence in stores (armed forces in uniform too…you will never see smash and grab at Buck-ees for example.) To call it shoplifting is soft-peddling what this is. This smash and grab criminals are organized and this needs to be treated as organized crime.
Really? I’m all about rewarding our public servants but coffee is downstream from the real problem. What changed and can we adjust that change to revert to a time when these things weren’t happening or happening less? What is the problem? I say give them free coffee, breakfast, lunch and dinner because they deserve it. However, none of that will matter if we don’t have enough of them or if our public policies aren’t properly aligned with the voting public’s wishes. Do we really think we have enough police officers and, more importantly, that they can drink enough coffee to be in every store, every minute of every day? My wish is to enjoy coffee with my local Sheriff’s Department and celebrate that we have successfully avoided unnecessarily putting them or the public in harm’s way with bad public policies.
Offering free coffee for cops, being extra attentive on selling floors, and public shaming are all good ideas to help deter shoplifting. However, we need much more to truly deter thieves and smash and grab organized crime that is seriously impacting retail profits.
While many retailers have just taken a hands-off approach to theft and just accepted it, it has now become out of hand. Finding a way to prosecute these crimes with the greatest penalty possible and publicizing the prosecutions may be one of the best methods to deter theft.
they should enforce the RICO act and penalities on them. the smash and grabs are organized crime.
Many Cities in the US do not allow Police or Firefighters to accept free anything – even a cup of coffee.
Let’s try anything and everything to fix this problem. Once people think that that anyone can get away with shoplifting, it’s hard to imagine a “regular” store again.
I like the creativity, and I am confident it will have a positive impact at Waitrose/John Lewis.
However, I see a potentially disturbing trend where all retailers will be “vying” for attention in an attempt to impact police decisions about where to hang out…what happens if Sainsbury’s, for example, says, “Free Coffee and a sandwich”, then M&S counters with something else, and on and on it goes-a “look at me” war consisting of trying to grab police officers attention with different “prizes”.
The sad trend remains the same-too much theft. Creative thinking and tactics help, but not to the extent we need them to.
What the police officer needs is to have more donuts. I wonder how more sugar makes policemen more effective? We need to find better approaches.
Had to be a picture of a police officer with a donut…… The need is to prosecute people who break the law, and put back the risk that if you steal, you will get caught and go to jail. Here in Portland people steal with impunity, with zero odds they will be caught, charged or have consequences. Enforcing the law, having more uniformed officers around, will reduce the amount of crime. There will still be some people who are not capable of responding to this kind of scenario, and we need more social services for them.
UK stores Waitrose and John Lewis offer free coffee to police, and Australia’s Drakes Supermarkets use shaming videos on Instagram will deter some shoplifting, but it is not a complete solution to an important problem.
Additional ways to reduce stealing in stores include having more employees around, using improved cameras, using special RFID tags to prevent theft, having well-trained security staff, making customers feel welcome, having stricter return rules, and working with police to patrol more.
I think “cops” – guess that isn’t seen as semi-pejorative anymore – are already being paid, and should be out doing their jobs.
I’m
flabbergastedcurious what (to me anyway) seems like the most obvious suggestion – more vigorous enforcement and sentencing of offenders – doesn’t seem to even be mentioned. Guess it will be getting it’s own thread…right ??Many here likely saw the brazen organized theft at a Southern California Nordstrom 3-4 weeks ago. They didn’t seem to care about the many employees or customers on the floor, or being recorded. Nor about the RFID tags and cables attached to the products. None of that was a deterrent.
Cops present in stores and patrolling near stores, in communities, was always a solid deterrent years ago.
Unless a dramatic change in strategy from elected officials is offered to help businesses, the message and current vibe to would be thieves is… “Your odds of theft are good as many police have left the local force, employees are told not to try and stop or shame you, we rarely pursue or arrest, and we rarely prosecute or back up our laws with consequences”
It will help but organized shoplifting is going to kill store retail without concerted efforts from private and public sector. Shoplifting has changed from delinquent behavior to organized crime and needs to be treated as such from public education to law enforcement both at the store end and prosecution in stolen good distribution and money laundering angle. As long as shoplifting is treated as petty crime, the situation is not going to improve.