High grocery prices? Grocery stores blame the thieves

Yahoo

19-05-2025

If you continue to shell out more and more for groceries, one major grocery retailer says: blame the thieves.
Stop & Shop, which runs more than 300 markets across the Northeast, has penned a letter to Congress saying retailers like them are operating on 'razor-thin' margins and are 'struggling with the vast impact of organized retail crime.'
The company is urging Congress to pass the 'Combating Organized Retail Crime Act,' which has now been reintroduced.
The bipartisan legislation specifically targets flash mob robberies and what it calls 'intricate retail theft schemes.' It cites data from the National Retail Federation showing larceny incidents increased by 93 percent in 2023 compared with 2019. The letter says that in recent years, 'criminal organizations have increasingly turned to retail crime to generate illicit profits, using internet-based tools to organize flash mobs, sell stolen goods and move money.'
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Stop & Shop says it does not, 'under any circumstances take a neighborhood's demographics into consideration when setting prices. The specific process for setting prices is highly confidential and competitively sensitive for any major retail business.'
But theft has been weighing on retailers.
Albertson's, which operates Vons and Pavilions, referred an inquiry about the retail theft trend and its impact on grocery prices to the California Retailers Association. Similar requests were sent to Kroger, parent company of Ralphs, and also to Whole Foods.
The California Retailers Association says online that it's committed to working with all stakeholders interested in solutions to retail theft and that this issue 'is too important to the safety of employees, customers, and communities.' It does not address the specifics of how those retail thefts may be increasing grocery prices.
Here in Los Angeles, District Attorney Nathan Hochman has launched a new campaign to crack down on retail theft, speaking in front of a 7-Eleven recently ransacked by dozens of teens. The district attorney also reiterated that the tide has changed in California. Proposition 36 makes certain thefts a felony, and the district attorney says thieves will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
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Consumer Confidential's David Lazarus calls it a big and growing problem, saying 'theft, particularly involving brazen mobs of shoplifters, have become all too common among merchants selling everything from clothing to electronics.'
As for what can be done about it? Lazarus says, 'At this point, the retail industry is responding with new security measures, such as limiting the number of customers inside a shop or hiring more guards. For consumers, this only adds to costs — and provides another reason to shop online. Whether lawmakers in Congress can address that in a meaningful fashion remains to be seen.'
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