March 20, 2009
Grocers Tagging Gourmet Food
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Partner, Fine
Food Network
Amongst numerous reports of consumers changing
the way they shop, cook and eat are tales of middle-income people finding
themselves unemployed and/or dealing with debt to an unprecedented level.
Alongside these now come reports that some are turning to theft in order
to maintain their previous lifestyle.
The progression apparently goes as follows:
some middle-income shoppers like gourmet food; some middle-income shoppers
have less to spend on food now than they have in the past; some middle-income
shoppers have taken to thieving because they can’t afford the same food
as usual but don’t want to change their ways. Rather than buying – or
stealing – essentials, they are trying to maintain their preferred
diet by taking what they want without paying.
Several British supermarkets have decided
to take action against gourmet shrinkage, however. According to a report
in The Times, "Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Tesco are
putting electronic tags on lobster, parmesan cheese and prime cuts of steak
to deter light-fingered foodies." Last week one branch of Sainsbury’s
was selling parmesan cheese costing £2.30 inside plastic security boxes
normally reserved for DVDs.
Up until recently, electronic tags were more
commonly used on non-food products such as DVDs, razor blades and perfume
that could be sold for cash. Now, however, Richard Dodd of the British
Retail Consortium believes that people are picking up things for themselves.
He told The Times, "Shoplifting is usually driven by people
stealing in an organized way but as we have headed into this recession
we have seen more people stealing a bigger range of items including food
to actually use themselves rather than sell."
Discussion questions: What
do you think of grocers using surveillance tags and other security measures
to prevent the theft of food? Have they gone too far? Is this an inevitable,
unforeseen consequence, of the recession?
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Retailers are smart to take whatever measures they can afford to help check theft by customers. They’ve spent decades trying to curb theft by employees. (My husband, who spent 20 years in grocery loss prevention, once arrested an employee who had moved a side of beef to his car.)
We may see quite a bit more of this coming our way. Not just the stealing, but the tagging too. Here’s why: water scarcity will be the issue in the coming years. That means the price of food and the availability of food will become dear. Those who can afford to eat well will be healthier than those who can’t–just like now…except to a further extreme.
I am not sure the “tagging” of food products should be put in the context of being or not being a food item. If there is a certain price/cost of the product that lends itself to profitably maintaining some sort of chain of transaction and that item lends itself to being a candidate for theft then there really is not a problem with retailers maintaining some oversight.
Why would a $20+ food item be any different than a like cost exposure in a drug or electronic or clothes retailer where we take the buzzing, bells and electronic tags for granted? How different is this conceptually from the Club stores counting items in your basket against your receipt or even as last time I was in a Home Depot in a potentially higher-shrink area?
Retailers will need to take greater measures than before to monitor and defer theft. This is a reality in times of economic crisis and wide-scale unemployment. In December, a friend of mine saw a well dressed woman in a business suit get arrested for shoplifting a supermarket in an upper middle income community. As she was being handled by security, she was crying profusely and apologetically explaining her sense of desperation and embarrassment. Next to her a Salvation Army collector leaned over and said, “Welcome to the ghetto.”
I don’t see how you can blame the retailer for protecting assets/inventory. The unfortunate outcome is that fewer people will purchase items they can’t touch, smell, squeeze, or interact with in some tactile way (thereby lowering total sales) and the cost to protect the products will increase the price, making it even more removed from the ability of the average shopper to accommodate it in the weekly food budget–which will also lead to fewer sales.
The business decision the retailer has to make is whether they choose to lose sales through theft or lose sales through making it harder for the shopper to purchase (and potentially losing sales to a competitor that has not barricaded products behind security devices of one kind or another (tags are relatively unobtrusive, but a “clamshell plastic covering” is an obstruction that some shoppers may reject).
“…lobster, Parmesan cheese and prime cuts of steak …. razor blades…” Razor Blades???
Come on, tell me this story was meant for publication 12 days from now.
While the odd shoplifter is a problem, it does not rival the losses from employee theft. Improvements in supply chain management have reduced shrink from the back room but it still exists. The new frontier in headaches are organized shoplifting rings.
RFID tags make good sense here to help protect high ticket items against theft. It is an unfortunate situation that as money becomes scarce, theft increases. RFID tagging would seem to be far less intrusive than other means of “watching” shoppers and staff. It’s important to let customers know that store items are tagged, and there are consequences–this step might also discourage some of the attempts to avoid payment. Most know that shoplifting just increases the cost of goods for everyone.
Retail theft whether by employees or “customers” makes it difficult and more costly for stores and for the rest of us who inevitably have to make up the difference. There is absolutely no difference between theft prevention tags on food products or leather coats. Retailers must protect themselves. While there has always been shoplifting, sadly it appears to be a sin on the rise (along with lying under oath, resume padding, falsifying tax returns, and cheating on exams). If people’s moral compasses are on the fritz, society must fight back with technology.
Protecting inventory from theft is critical, of course. And no retailer, anywhere, with any product has to apologize for that. Good times or bad, a retailer has to be realistic.
However, that is only one benefit of tagging. Whether we are talking gourmet foods, or canned beans, we are seeing tremendous inventory management achievements with tags that can be monitored throughout the supply chain, not just in store, like EAS. There are real-world examples of this happening now with Metro AG, Matiq in Norway, and many others. Of course, there is also the Walmart history here, too.
Bottom line, do what you have to do. Protect the inventory, with EAS if necessary, moving to pallet, then case, then item-level RFID tags. Don’t be afraid of the future!
The same “middle-class” shoplifters that steal to maintain the accustomed lifestyle, rather than adjust to their new economic status demonstrate an underlying character flaw that likely manifested in day-to-day business. A thief is a thief is a thief, and by extension, morally flawed from the git-go. Personnel pre-hire screening should focus on ways to filter their characters out of the system before they turn into Jeffery Skillings and Bernie Madoffs. Lack of a moral compass doesn’t start with an economic downturn.
Advertisers contribute to this by implying and even stating that (customers, shoppers, consumers, etc. ) are “entitled,” or “deserve” to live at a higher level. The sense of good fortune they should have quickly morphs into a sense of entitlement.
Maybe I’m naive to believe that a strong ethical platform is important for this system to work, year after decade after generation. I suggest reading the Investor’s Business Daily article from Monday, 3-25-09, on keeping the psychopath out of the corner office. I’ve worked for him once or twice. They inevitably cost the company money. Then they move on, leaving the company with disrupted operations, staffs and processes. But I’m just a blue collar drone, what do I know?
A simple universal system of comparative weights exists in each retail store-digital scales. Combining the existing data to eliminate retail theft takes minimal extra effort.
Step 1. Any person, their own property and shopping cart entering the “inventory space” gets a ticket like a parting lot ticket. This is a reading of the their “tare” digital weight or unladen entry weight. The gross weight of all products less the tare weight will equal the authorized purchases. An entry bar coded ticket is printed and the physical weight is not on the ticket.
Step 2. Manufactures include their weight embedded in the UPC label or the in store packaged product also includes the product weights (bakery, meats, cheese, deli) on a price label. For produce or bulk items they are weighed during the check out process. Any product not sold by weight like a bottle of wine or beer would be handled like produce/bulk items or in store labeled with a weight.
Step 3. A manned or unmanned check-out station begins the transaction by reading the entry “tare” ticket just like checking out at an automated parking lot. The normal scanning is completed and a comparison of the gross weight less tare weights is printed on the receipt. A ticket printer presents a exit card which is inserted in a reader like the parking lot. A zero variance mean everything has been paid for and no concealed items are present.
Step 4. A positive number alerts loss prevention that a product is in fact concealed – a request to reveal any concealed product and pay is the next step. If nothing is exposed then normal loss prevention techniques are begun. Since no exit card has been issued, the customer is blocked from just leaving. A “bag” check or pocket emptying will likely determine if there are any unpaid items. The payment step would have been completed and an offer to pay for “forgotten items” would trigger a retail theft event.
Conclusion: The hybrid shop/shoplifting technique is thwarted and the type of recession prone luxury item stealing is most likely occurring within a hybrid store visit. The ability to shoplift half of the value of the purchased basket is common with stealing luxury items. The highest value per pound items are part of the luxury item definition.
The pure shoplifting human bypasses the checkout process. They would reach the exit without an exit ticket and would step on the digital scale for their exit weighing. If their gross weight is higher than their “tare” then the loss prevention person would step in.
If a shopping family has children their tare would be combined with their parent/adult tare weight ticket. The tare weight weight pad is big enough for carts, baby stroller, wheel chairs or multi people.
A mobility scooter/wheel chair/baby stoller with extra bags create a cover for shoplifting. This system deals equally with everyone equally and fairly while detecting any retail theft.
The equipment is used by FedEX to weigh cargo containers/forklift trucks. The comparative weight process is well tested to determine the true weight of the shipment. The floor scales are very reliable and tested in these harsh all weather industrial applications. The process of maintaining/calibrating all the scales in a store already is in place.
The RFID process is very expensive and ability of a thwart the signal is well known.
The data needed for this plan is available in every store today. The conversion to knowledge to STOP retail theft is better, cheaper and faster to deploy than any other method. Video has limitations and is extremely expensive to monitor. On floor loss prevention is of course the most expensive.
This plan is based on physics and will stand up in court.
Most restrooms are outside the check out area. If a the weight is greater then and only then does an alarm sound. A weight less than expected is of no concern.
I would like get any feedback on this concept and if anyone currently has tried it.
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Retailers are smart to take whatever measures they can afford to help check theft by customers. They’ve spent decades trying to curb theft by employees. (My husband, who spent 20 years in grocery loss prevention, once arrested an employee who had moved a side of beef to his car.)
We may see quite a bit more of this coming our way. Not just the stealing, but the tagging too. Here’s why: water scarcity will be the issue in the coming years. That means the price of food and the availability of food will become dear. Those who can afford to eat well will be healthier than those who can’t–just like now…except to a further extreme.
I am not sure the “tagging” of food products should be put in the context of being or not being a food item. If there is a certain price/cost of the product that lends itself to profitably maintaining some sort of chain of transaction and that item lends itself to being a candidate for theft then there really is not a problem with retailers maintaining some oversight.
Why would a $20+ food item be any different than a like cost exposure in a drug or electronic or clothes retailer where we take the buzzing, bells and electronic tags for granted? How different is this conceptually from the Club stores counting items in your basket against your receipt or even as last time I was in a Home Depot in a potentially higher-shrink area?
Retailers will need to take greater measures than before to monitor and defer theft. This is a reality in times of economic crisis and wide-scale unemployment. In December, a friend of mine saw a well dressed woman in a business suit get arrested for shoplifting a supermarket in an upper middle income community. As she was being handled by security, she was crying profusely and apologetically explaining her sense of desperation and embarrassment. Next to her a Salvation Army collector leaned over and said, “Welcome to the ghetto.”
I don’t see how you can blame the retailer for protecting assets/inventory. The unfortunate outcome is that fewer people will purchase items they can’t touch, smell, squeeze, or interact with in some tactile way (thereby lowering total sales) and the cost to protect the products will increase the price, making it even more removed from the ability of the average shopper to accommodate it in the weekly food budget–which will also lead to fewer sales.
The business decision the retailer has to make is whether they choose to lose sales through theft or lose sales through making it harder for the shopper to purchase (and potentially losing sales to a competitor that has not barricaded products behind security devices of one kind or another (tags are relatively unobtrusive, but a “clamshell plastic covering” is an obstruction that some shoppers may reject).
“…lobster, Parmesan cheese and prime cuts of steak …. razor blades…” Razor Blades???
Come on, tell me this story was meant for publication 12 days from now.
While the odd shoplifter is a problem, it does not rival the losses from employee theft. Improvements in supply chain management have reduced shrink from the back room but it still exists. The new frontier in headaches are organized shoplifting rings.
RFID tags make good sense here to help protect high ticket items against theft. It is an unfortunate situation that as money becomes scarce, theft increases. RFID tagging would seem to be far less intrusive than other means of “watching” shoppers and staff. It’s important to let customers know that store items are tagged, and there are consequences–this step might also discourage some of the attempts to avoid payment. Most know that shoplifting just increases the cost of goods for everyone.
Retail theft whether by employees or “customers” makes it difficult and more costly for stores and for the rest of us who inevitably have to make up the difference. There is absolutely no difference between theft prevention tags on food products or leather coats. Retailers must protect themselves. While there has always been shoplifting, sadly it appears to be a sin on the rise (along with lying under oath, resume padding, falsifying tax returns, and cheating on exams). If people’s moral compasses are on the fritz, society must fight back with technology.
Protecting inventory from theft is critical, of course. And no retailer, anywhere, with any product has to apologize for that. Good times or bad, a retailer has to be realistic.
However, that is only one benefit of tagging. Whether we are talking gourmet foods, or canned beans, we are seeing tremendous inventory management achievements with tags that can be monitored throughout the supply chain, not just in store, like EAS. There are real-world examples of this happening now with Metro AG, Matiq in Norway, and many others. Of course, there is also the Walmart history here, too.
Bottom line, do what you have to do. Protect the inventory, with EAS if necessary, moving to pallet, then case, then item-level RFID tags. Don’t be afraid of the future!
The same “middle-class” shoplifters that steal to maintain the accustomed lifestyle, rather than adjust to their new economic status demonstrate an underlying character flaw that likely manifested in day-to-day business. A thief is a thief is a thief, and by extension, morally flawed from the git-go. Personnel pre-hire screening should focus on ways to filter their characters out of the system before they turn into Jeffery Skillings and Bernie Madoffs. Lack of a moral compass doesn’t start with an economic downturn.
Advertisers contribute to this by implying and even stating that (customers, shoppers, consumers, etc. ) are “entitled,” or “deserve” to live at a higher level. The sense of good fortune they should have quickly morphs into a sense of entitlement.
Maybe I’m naive to believe that a strong ethical platform is important for this system to work, year after decade after generation. I suggest reading the Investor’s Business Daily article from Monday, 3-25-09, on keeping the psychopath out of the corner office. I’ve worked for him once or twice. They inevitably cost the company money. Then they move on, leaving the company with disrupted operations, staffs and processes. But I’m just a blue collar drone, what do I know?
A simple universal system of comparative weights exists in each retail store-digital scales. Combining the existing data to eliminate retail theft takes minimal extra effort.
Step 1. Any person, their own property and shopping cart entering the “inventory space” gets a ticket like a parting lot ticket. This is a reading of the their “tare” digital weight or unladen entry weight. The gross weight of all products less the tare weight will equal the authorized purchases. An entry bar coded ticket is printed and the physical weight is not on the ticket.
Step 2. Manufactures include their weight embedded in the UPC label or the in store packaged product also includes the product weights (bakery, meats, cheese, deli) on a price label. For produce or bulk items they are weighed during the check out process. Any product not sold by weight like a bottle of wine or beer would be handled like produce/bulk items or in store labeled with a weight.
Step 3. A manned or unmanned check-out station begins the transaction by reading the entry “tare” ticket just like checking out at an automated parking lot. The normal scanning is completed and a comparison of the gross weight less tare weights is printed on the receipt. A ticket printer presents a exit card which is inserted in a reader like the parking lot. A zero variance mean everything has been paid for and no concealed items are present.
Step 4. A positive number alerts loss prevention that a product is in fact concealed – a request to reveal any concealed product and pay is the next step. If nothing is exposed then normal loss prevention techniques are begun. Since no exit card has been issued, the customer is blocked from just leaving. A “bag” check or pocket emptying will likely determine if there are any unpaid items. The payment step would have been completed and an offer to pay for “forgotten items” would trigger a retail theft event.
Conclusion: The hybrid shop/shoplifting technique is thwarted and the type of recession prone luxury item stealing is most likely occurring within a hybrid store visit. The ability to shoplift half of the value of the purchased basket is common with stealing luxury items. The highest value per pound items are part of the luxury item definition.
The pure shoplifting human bypasses the checkout process. They would reach the exit without an exit ticket and would step on the digital scale for their exit weighing. If their gross weight is higher than their “tare” then the loss prevention person would step in.
If a shopping family has children their tare would be combined with their parent/adult tare weight ticket. The tare weight weight pad is big enough for carts, baby stroller, wheel chairs or multi people.
A mobility scooter/wheel chair/baby stoller with extra bags create a cover for shoplifting. This system deals equally with everyone equally and fairly while detecting any retail theft.
The equipment is used by FedEX to weigh cargo containers/forklift trucks. The comparative weight process is well tested to determine the true weight of the shipment. The floor scales are very reliable and tested in these harsh all weather industrial applications. The process of maintaining/calibrating all the scales in a store already is in place.
The RFID process is very expensive and ability of a thwart the signal is well known.
The data needed for this plan is available in every store today. The conversion to knowledge to STOP retail theft is better, cheaper and faster to deploy than any other method. Video has limitations and is extremely expensive to monitor. On floor loss prevention is of course the most expensive.
This plan is based on physics and will stand up in court.
Most restrooms are outside the check out area. If a the weight is greater then and only then does an alarm sound. A weight less than expected is of no concern.
I would like get any feedback on this concept and if anyone currently has tried it.