Greggs shifts meals behind counters to cease shoplifting | EUROtoday

Greggs will transfer its self-serve meals and drinks to behind the counter to stamp out shoplifting on the High Street bakery.

The firm is trialling the measure at a handful of shops which, it mentioned, are “exposed to higher levels of anti-social behaviour”.

These embody Whitechapel in east London which is one in all 5 retailers that can check out the brand new coverage – the others are in Peckham and Ilford.

It isn’t anticipated that the change will probably be applied throughout all Greggs’ 2,600 bakeries within the UK, however it could be rolled out to websites the place there are excessive ranges of theft.

In 2024, shoplifting offences recorded by the police rose by 20% to 516,971, in accordance the Office for National Statistics.

But the variety of thefts recorded by retailers was far larger – for the yr to final September retailers noticed a 3.7 million rise to twenty.4 million, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) mentioned.

Greggs mentioned clients can count on to see its full vary behind its counters however added: “The safety of our colleagues and customers remains our number one priority.”

Some retailers, together with supermarkets, have reported being focused by organised gangs who put on bluetooth headsets to speak with one another and set off alarms in shops to create a distraction permitting their fellow shoplifters to flee.

Andy Higginson, chair of sportswear and coach retailer JD Sports and the BRC, just lately advised the BBC that some see shoplifting as a “way of life”, permitting them to commerce or promote what they’ve stolen.

“There is an element of society that is starting to take stealing from stores as a way of life and that needs to be stopped,” he mentioned.

Shoplifting incidents have risen lately, with a pointy spike within the variety of retail crimes reported after the Covid pandemic, a few of which has been attributed to larger family payments and the worth of meals.

Mr Higginson dismissed the concept it is perhaps attributable to individuals combating price of residing pressures. “People are not stealing the food to eat they’re stealing very high value items that can be traded and sold,” he mentioned.

However, the boss of a agency that gives safety for retailers and supermarkets mentioned that the kind of shoplifter his workers is seeing is altering and now consists of pensioners who’re combating residing prices.

John Nussbaum, director of service for retail at Kingdom Security, mentioned: “We’ve seen a massive increase in pensioners shoplifting, putting a jar of coffee in their bag and one in the trolley, that sort of thing.

“For us during the last 12 months, we have got this totally different degree of crime now. We’re now experiencing one thing totally different – pensioners, individuals who do not usually shoplift.”

He added: “We’ve had situations of moms caught shoplifting after they’re with their youngsters.”