Giant-MD to stop stocking national brands at its Alabama Avenue SE store due to theft

[mjhale]

Giant-MD is going to stop stocking name brands like Colgate, Tide and Advil at its Alabama Avenue SE store according to this article from WTOP.com. Only store or private brand equivalents will be offered. The Alabama Avenue SE store has been hit by large amounts of retail theft. The DC city councilman for the area has asked Giant-MD to keep the store open even though Giant says it has no plans to close the store. This part of DC is considered to be a food desert. The only other conventional grocery store in this part of town is a Safeway further up Alabama Avenue at Good Hope Road. A Lidl did recently open in the Skyland Center development across from the Safeway.

https://wtop.com/dc/2023/09/no-more-col ... -dc-store/

[pseudo3d]

This is an interesting question...every chain has its better stores and its lousier stores, but at what point can a chain go where conditions become so bad that it has to be cut from the chain?

[mjhale]

This is an interesting question...every chain has its better stores and its lousier stores, but at what point can a chain go where conditions become so bad that it has to be cut from the chain?

The lack of grocery options in DC east of the Anacostia River is what makes this newsworthy. Prior to this Giant-MD store opening, your grocery choices were to go to the Safeway further up Alabama Avenue, a small bodega/convenience store type store or to go into surrounding areas in Maryland to do your shopping. Walmart was going to build a store in the Skyland redevelopment on Good Hope Road but bailed when the reneged on their promises to build six stores within the District. Lidl ended up opening in Skyland so there is that option now. I am surprised that Giant-MD didn't try a pay then pick up system for the items that they are pulling from the shelves - something like Costco uses where you take a card to the register to pay for your item and then take the card and your receipt to a pick up area. Yes it would be more labor intensive but some subset - perhaps the most purchased items - would still be available for purchase but would not be out on shelves vulnerable to grab and go shoplifters. Someone would have to risk armed robbery at that point to get items that are stored behind the counter. One could suggest that Giant-MD is taking this seemingly drastic measure to then say something like even this doesn't curb theft, we are closing the store. That's not going to end well for Giant closing a store in a food desert area. They are going to end up between the community and the city council fighting over who let this happen and why crime is so bad in the area. Not a situation that I think any retailer, especially a grocery store, wants to be in.

[mbz321]

Reading that article, I'm surprised that location leaves both entrances open. That is usually the first thing to be secured when crime starts to get bad.

[BillyGr]

I am surprised that Giant-MD didn't try a pay then pick up system for the items that they are pulling from the shelves - something like Costco uses where you take a card to the register to pay for your item and then take the card and your receipt to a pick-up area. Yes, it would be more labor intensive but some subset - perhaps the most purchased items - would still be available for purchase but would not be out on shelves vulnerable to grab and go shoplifters. Someone would have to risk armed robbery at that point to get items that are stored behind the counter.

Good question, since this has been done for items for some time now (think Toys R Us back in the earlier days of video games).
Not difficult to do, and the area where the items are stored behind the desk could have a small opening (big enough for the items but not much more) to prevent issues even further (as many places were doing for protection in recent years anyway).

Reading that article, I'm surprised that location leaves both entrances open. That is usually the first thing to be secured when crime starts to get bad.

Two entries wouldn't cause an issue, more about having less ways to get out that can be controlled more easily

[storewanderer]

I think stopping items like, for instance, Olay Facial Products, will not cause any issues for them. These are hardly sold but often stolen. There may not be private label substitutes but actual paying purchases of these items are so infrequent it won't matter. They probably won't lose $100 a day in sales from ending this line of items.

Not stocking Tide or Colgate strikes me as a problem. There is little to no private label in the laundry detergent or toothpaste category. How will that work?

There comes a point when the store is no longer meeting consumer expectations for a "Giant" store. At what point do you debrand the store and put a different banner on it in order to not cause confusion to customers from outside the area?

This would not be unlike what Save Mart does with Food Maxx. A ton of non food/higher cost/often stolen items are pulled from the assortment when a store is converted to Food Maxx.

[BillyGr]

Not stocking Tide or Colgate strikes me as a problem. There is little to no private label in the laundry detergent or toothpaste category. How will that work?

There are store branded laundry items. Maybe not as much toothpaste, but there are other brands besides Colgate, some of which are generally cheaper and probably less attractive to thieves.

Of course, they could just take a page from Toys R Us, or Service Merchandise, and have those items available for pickup AFTER they are paid for (as TRU did with video games and Service did with many items), which solves the problem while still allowing those who want the items legitimately to get them.

[mjhale]

Here's the latest article on the situation at the Alabama Avenue Giant store. A local leader is calling for more security officers even though the store has spent $300,000 on security efforts.

https://wtop.com/dc/2023/09/local-leade ... permarket/

Giant is in a difficult position with this store. If they close, they risk political blow back of doing so in a food desert, majority minority neighborhood. At the same time, if they stay open but removing major product lines or brands, they risk not being a Giant anymore as storewanderer said. They also risk accusations of only making these moves in this specific neighborhood. There is a Giant store south of the Alabama Avenue store just into PG County where a security guard was shot and killed by a shoplifter that was confronted. The shoplifter was killed too as the guard was able to return fire before dying. (Story Link) The store where this happened is in an equally rough neighborhood but it has not had product removed like the Alabama Avenue store. Perhaps that store hasn't had the extreme shoplifting issues that Giant is seeing at Alabama Avenue.

Giant seems to be making some drastic moves with the Alabama Avenue store. Asserting they will close if theft doesn't get better and now removing product lines due to theft. I'm not saying the moves are not justified given the levels of theft they are experiencing. At the same time, the moves tend to look like an inflexible retailer who doesn't want to figure out how to serve their neighborhood. As I said up-thread, could they have tried a buy then pick up system for high theft items prior to just removing them? Or lockups of high theft items behind the registers where the item is requested and then brought to you at checkout? I have seen this system used for baby formula and some higher dollar HBA items at some more challenging Giant-PA locations. Maybe what Giant is really aiming for here is a way to close this store with a minimum of reputational harm. That only harms the upstanding citizens of the area who want decent grocery options. This is really a larger problem to solve beyond Giant. It is going to take everyone in the community to finally decide to fight the problem without worrying about every little group - good and bad - who will be affected. The sad thing is that if it goes like it usually does, if Giant closes, the blame machine will fly in all directions without actually making anything better for the community.

[ClownLoach]

Not stocking Tide or Colgate strikes me as a problem. There is little to no private label in the laundry detergent or toothpaste category. How will that work?

There are store branded laundry items. Maybe not as much toothpaste, but there are other brands besides Colgate, some of which are generally cheaper and probably less attractive to thieves.

Of course, they could just take a page from Toys R Us, or Service Merchandise, and have those items available for pickup AFTER they are paid for (as TRU did with video games and Service did with many items), which solves the problem while still allowing those who want the items legitimately to get them.

I don't understand why this seems to be so damned difficult for retailers to get. I live in a very nice neighborhood and our neighborhood Ralphs has a wall of lock up cages up front by customer service. Tide, baby formula, and a number of health and beauty items are represented on the shelf with laminated plastic cards that say "please bring this to checkout to purchase this product." The cashier immediately will radio for the manager to go grab the Tide or whatever else. If they've got a big sale going I've noticed they'll stage a few packages in the cubby under the register to speed up the process too. It doesn't cause any delays or inconvenience and more importantly prevents the store from being targeted by these thieves which makes it a safer place to work and shop.

If they've got a pharmacy then they can do the same thing with health items and have a bunch of these items behind the counter (and put up bandit barriers like the bank to prevent intrusion). Costco has merchandise pickup counters and does just fine.

I believe that unfortunately most retailers listen to the same boring blowhard retail consulting firms like Accenture that tell them securing merchandise with pickup counters will surely cost them millions of dollars in sales, so much that they're better off allowing the shrink. I get that there are some difficult situations out there with certain product lines, I've joked about the overhead paging to unlock the "condom case" at Walmart, but I doubt that the same situation of customer shame applies to mom who needs Tide and baby formula. Some people have to be smarter than this.

Best Buy, despite their incredible incompetence, has figured this out and is remodeling stores to the 1998 Circuit City format with a third of the store walled off for a warehouse, pickup counter and loading dock. Having worked almost a decade for Circuit City I can tell you that even in the most difficult high crime areas their stores had very little shrink - most stores lost a couple thousand a month maximum and these were $30M plus stores, and most of the time I could attribute the loss to the warehouse or employee error.

Unfortunately I think the only way they can do this right is to follow the example from the Ralphs with the laminated cards and glass cases up front, or maybe a lock up room by the register area etc. I don't see customers having much of a right to complain or call this discriminatory practice especially if well managed so there is no real inconvenience. But taking the products out of the store is still going to be called redlining, discrimination, and so forth so nobody's going to win here. Unfortunately it does sound like they're acting as Walmart did in Chicago, they're very clearly explaining to the press that they're making serious attempts to keep the store open because it's being shoplifted out of business. They've been publicizing the necessary closure of stores will occur if they cannot control losses. So when they give in and close down the store it's going to be hard to villianize them because they can say they really tried to keep it open.

[Romr123]

Exactly right---living within 2 miles of 8 mile road in Detroit, the retailers (Meijer/Kroger/Rite Aid/CVS) all have the "grab the card" process pretty well down pat. (Meijer a little less blatantly than the others...they still have liquor/wine/beer out in the open). Maaaaybe it's one additional FTE and the cost of the cards/lockups, but seems minimal and as you say--creates a safer, better store environment.