Grocery stores and pharmacies have been facing a problem with theft at self-checkout for a while now, and one big regional grocer is adopting a new solution to try to fix the issue.
Schnucks, a grocery chain with over 100 stores in the Midwest, is limiting customers who can use self-checkout to those with 10 or less items, according to a report by Business Insider.
The store said in a statement in the report that its main reason for the move was to improve “customer service and checkout efficiency,” but acknowledged that these self-checkout aisles are more “susceptible to theft” and that this new policy should help with that problem.
The company also defended the move to insider by saying that self-checkout was always meant for “smaller orders.”
Self-checkout systems were supposed to be positive cost-savers for grocery stores and pharmacies looking to cut down on labor costs, but in many cases, the prevalence of theft has made self-checkout even more costly.
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Late last year, Target already implemented the same method as Schnucks at some of its stores around the country. The national supermarket also said that the move was to improve shopping efficiency by cutting wait time and not to curb theft.
But the company has also reported high levels of theft at self-checkout in the past.
Shrink, which is the term used to define lost merchandise, is made easier in these self-checkout machines as customers, whether purposely or accidentally, would not scan some items.
Different grocers have attempted to adopt other security methods to cutdown on shrink, including added machines that measure the weight of the scanned items, better surveillance, and, ironically, adding more staff to these self-checkout areas.
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