How a shoplifting crimewave is forcing the retreat of self-checkout.
Retailers are questioning the use of unmanned scanners as the cost of theft rises
Hannah Boland20 March 2024 •
On the shop floor of supermarkets there is one shoplifting tactic which has become so commonplace, staff have given it its own name.
The “banana trick” consists of putting an item through a self-checkout as a cheap fruit or vegetable product and walking out with a much more expensive item.
“Best life hack ever,” one TikTok user claims in a viral video, joking that they managed to get a TV and Playstation through a self-service checkout by logging them as grapes or bananas.
“The thing is when it comes to self-scanning tills, it’s hard to know how much is deliberate stealing and how much is by mistake,” says Paul Foley, the former UK boss of Aldi. “But what is absolutely the case is that the amount supermarkets are losing is much higher through them than manned tills.”
Some studies suggest shoplifters are as much as 21 times more likely to get items past a machine than a human. In the UK, a survey by the marketing website Fat Joe found that more than 40pc of 2,500 people surveyed admitted to stealing from stores, with self-service checkouts cited as a key driver.
It comes amid a wider boom in retail crime, with industry data showing shop thefts have more than doubled over the past year across Britain.
A jump in shoplifting is an issue which has been plaguing grocery chiefs after years of pouring cash into self-service checkouts only to realise they are contributing to thefts. Over the past five years, the number of self-checkout machines in UK supermarkets has risen from 53,000 to 80,000.
In the US, similarly, the roll-out has been significant. A study from 2021 found that around 96pc of US food retailers had self-service checkouts in their stores. There, too, crime rates have been on the rise and US grocers have begun signalling their retreat from self-service tills as a result.
Target, which has almost 2,000 stores across the US, last week said it was introducing a 10- item limit on how much shoppers could pay for using self-service checkouts, adding it was opening more traditional manned lanes in its stores.
Others including Dollar General have said they are ripping out self-service checkouts in a drive to clamp down on theft.
Earlier this month, the company unveiled plans to axe self-service tills in 300 shops and convert more to manned checkouts in thousands of other locations. Todd Vasos, chief executive of the retailer, said he believed this could have a “material and positive” impact on theft levels.
Dollar General used artificial intelligence to determine the stores which are most affected by shoplifting.
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“The tide is turning regarding the use of self-checkout,” says Brittain Ladd, a former consultant to Kroger. “Many retailers have grown tired of the increased theft that occurs when customers use self-checkout.”
The about-turn on the technology is not surprising and has been coming for some time, according to Christopher Andrews, an associate professor at Drew University and who has written about supermarket self-checkouts.
“Stores soon learned that if they didn’t staff self-checkout lanes they risked losing more money than they saved through the ‘banana trick’ and other forms of theft,” says Andrews.
He adds staffing these self-service areas meant ultimately grocers were not really able to employ fewer people. “Now they’re left with this expensive technology that unless closely monitored risks losing them money. They let the proverbial genie out of the bottle and now they don’t know what to do.”
In the UK, Booths unveiled plans last year to remove self-service checkouts from all but two of its stores. It said this decision was driven by a realisation that customers simply found the checkouts slow and frustrating to use.
“We stock quite a lot of loose items – fruit and veg and bakery – and as soon as you go to a self-scan with those you’ve got to get a visual verification on them,” Nigel Murray, managing director of Booths, said at the time.
“Some customers don’t know one different apple versus another for example.”
Other retail chiefs have similarly pointed to customer frustrations with using the checkouts. Archie Norman, chairman of Marks & Spencer, last November said shoplifting was becoming more common among middle class customers because of faulty checkouts.
“With the reduction of service you get in a lot of shops, a lot of people think: ‘this didn’t scan properly, or it’s very difficult to scan these things through and I shop here all the time. It’s not my fault, I’m owed it’... You see it with the self-checkouts, there’s a little bit of that creeping in.”
All this may point to more UK supermarkets following their US rivals and pulling the self-scanning checkouts out of stores. However, so far British grocers have been pushing ahead in fitting out shops with more of the technology.
Tesco chief Ken Murphy last summer defended a drive to install more self-scanning technology, saying it could “liberate people to do things in shops to make sure that the products on the shelves that you can find”.
M&S is bringing in more of the checkouts for its homeware and clothing departments as well as its food stores.
Foley says it is easy to understand why UK retailers are making such moves.
In part, it comes down to how much space supermarkets have. Stores are, after all, able to fit many more self-service checkouts than manned tills in the same space.
Recruitment challenges, meanwhile, are significant across the UK and finding supermarket workers is a hard task.
“When you look at big cities, especially London, it’s so difficult to hire people that almost every checkout is self-service,” Foley says. “If you can’t find the staff, you’ve got no choice really.”
In the UK, supermarkets are prioritising installing better technology that can not only scan products but can use tools like AI and facial recognition to curb criminals.
“There are lots of jokes about unexpected items in the bagging area, but it’s true that technology is starting to be able to pick that up more,” Foley says. “There’s a lot of sophisticated tools being developed.”
Shoppers may have been able to get away with the “banana trick” in stores for some time, but those days are likely to soon be over. Whether through fewer self-service checkouts or savvier technology, supermarkets have been clear they are taking action. DT.
