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Local stores find solutions to shopping- cart theft
Missing carts cause stores $800 million in losses globally
By Kelly Wilkinson
For most people, grocery carts are simply utilitarian means of hauling purchases out to the car. For others, they serve a more vital purpose--they hold recylables that will bring in a day's wage, they provide shelter in stormy weather and they offer a way for those without cars to lug a load of dirty whites to the local laundromat.
But for Robyn Webb, the carts represent an $8,000 to $10,000 cut into his profits each year. As manager of the Safeway in Sunnyvale for six years, Webb says straying carts have long been a bane of his existence.
But now, with the April installation of a front-wheel clamping system that activates when a cart is wheeled over a yellow spray-painted line, Webb and others are hoping their carts will stay in their rightful place.
Webb figures since he's been manager, he's lost 50 to 100 carts every six months because of theft, at a cost of $75 to $100 per cart. Since Webb installed CAPS (Cart Anti-Theft Protection System) on 150 of his 200-cart stock, not one of the protected carts has disappeared. Of the 50 unprotected carts, 35 have been stolen.
And Webb isn't alone in his cart frustrations. According to the Food Marketing Institute in Washington D.C., annual losses total more than $800 million globally, and $15 million in California.
In response to those statistics, former investor John French spent more than two years developing the CAPS system that Webb and well over 100 other grocery stores around the country now employ.
"We learned that this was a huge problem and about all the money associated with it," French said. "So we nosed around and determined there wasn't a good solution."
In theory, the system French developed is similar to the electric fences that give dogs' necks a yank when they cross an underground boundary. It comprises a 1-inch wire loop running under the perimeter of the parking lot that connects to a low-power antenna. If the cart strays over the bright boundaries painted on the property, a signal prompts a boot to lock over the wheel, thus preventing it from rolling any further. French said the debilitated carts need an electric zap from store personnel to deactivate the clamp and return it to stock.
With this invention, an entire cottage industry now may be disrupted, said Debra Lambert, Corporate Director of Public Affairs for the Pleasanton-based Safeway chain.
"This is something that tends to be a phenomenon in California," she said. "It floors people that it's such a problem here."
She said Safeway and other retailers that provide carts for their customers often turn to retrieval services to round up strays. "The retrieval services are a necessity," Lambert said. "But unfortunately, on their own they're not improving the situation."
According to Lambert, the retrieval companies turn million-dollar profits from honing in on where grocery carts are usually dumped, collecting them in vans, and returning them to their home bases. She said stores employ their services as often as their needs require.
But this measure is reactive instead of proactive, can become quite costly, and does nothing to deter cart horders.
Webb said his store's security caught one of the retrieval services picking up carts on the property and bringing them back as strays at the end of the day.
"I'm sure that's the exception to the rule," Lambert said. "For the most part, they're very helpful and honest."
Other industry-tested solutions include a laser-triggered locking device, and posting security guards. According to Webb, the various stabs at solutions are largely ineffective, awkward, or clunky.
Webb said he and other grocers have also tried a quarter loan fee for the carts, in which shoppers inserted a quarter into the cart bay, which was reimbursed when they returned the carts. But Webb said it failed because of inconvenience.
"How many times do you always have a quarter on you when you go shopping?" he asked.
Lambert said that in her experience, cart theft transcends social status. "A lot of the perception is that it's an economic issue or connected to homeless," she said. "But that's a very minor part."
The only commonalty she points to is the location of stores--ones in dense areas where most shoppers need to walk or where parking is tight tend to be the stores hardest hit.
Sue Johnson, member of a Sunnyvale neighborhood association, lives in a corner house a 10 to 15 minute walk from the Lucky's on Maude and Mathilda avenues. She describes her neighborhood as middle class.
"[The neighborhood] is a mess," she said. "And there doesnt look like there is any end in sight. I take pride in my home and my neighborhood, and I just don't like seeing [the carts]."
Johnson said her association has been working with a police officer to try to curb the problem, and she remains in contact with Lucky's management. But so far, because of what she termed Lucky's refusal to cooperate, she boycotts the chain.
Managers at the Lucky store on Mathilda as well as on DeAnza Boulevard would not comment.
Johnson tells of the bright green and red carts sitting on her corner for weeks. Kids use them to play on and teenagers pile into the baskets and take them for joy rides, racing down the street on often-wobbly wheels.
So far, she said members of her association have requested the store increase its retrieval rounds and have suggested the store purchase various disabling mechanisms. Now, she said, people in her neighborhood have decided to confront the suspected carts thieves and report them. Grocery cart theft is a misdemeanor, but Sunnyvale code enforcement officer Doug Spinelli said the legislation is cumbersome and seldom enforced.
For her part, Johnson doesn't look forward to taking matters into her own hands. "It will definitely be awkward because I'm sure people will want to know who's squealing on them," she said.
Johnson also commended Nob Hill Foods' old-fashioned practice of providing baggers who then walk the groceries to the shopper's car. Nob Hill's corporate spokesperson Susan Kennedy said this service has kept levels of cart theft lower for its stores than for other chains'.
"Typically, our courtesy clerks carry them out and then run back so there are no carts in the lot, which means there is no real recovery program," she said.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
