Policy on Food Consumption

[Crime Doctor]

What is your store policy on people who consume food in the store? With items like fruit the evidence is gone unless you have video. With other items, the food packaging can be hard to recover after a long moving surveillance.

Also, what is your policy on storing food evidence? I raised this question because I spotted a guy today walking through a grocery store eating out of a box of donuts from his shopping cart. Don’t know if he paid for the donuts or not but would have been a good prospect to watch.

[kevin]

When walking the floor, managers, employees and agents are supposed to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. We had a very large case, where a family was eating salad off the salad bar, getting cold sodas from the cooler and eating chicken from the deli as they shopped. Each day it was 20-30 dollar loss.

Usually, when an agent sees a customer eating donuts or drinking a soda while walking around, they keep close tabs on them and see where they ditch the container. Then after they check out, they are detained and banned from the store.

We do not stop grazers or those who eat fruit in the store, because it usually is not worth the time and hassle.

This happens more often than not and is usually one of the most preferred methods of stealing (behind pushouts).

[LisaLP]

It is stealing and my store's policy is if all the elements are there, apprehend
However, I leave that decision up to the store manager unless the customer is "going to town". I can't say that I take much time with eaters because there is so much other activity to be watching. I would hate to know that someone just wiped out my formula section because I was watching someone eating Reeces Pieces before paying for them.

[Archie]

Originally Posted by Crime Doctor

What is your store policy on people who consume food in the store? With items like fruit the evidence is gone unless you have video. With other items, the food packaging can be hard to recover after a long moving surveillance.

Also, what is your policy on storing food evidence? I raised this question because I spotted a guy today walking through a grocery store eating out of a box of donuts from his shopping cart. Don’t know if he paid for the donuts or not but would have been a good prospect to watch.

Unless of course it was a Safeway store and he looked like he suffered with slow cognitive processing...in which case he should be left alone lest the media and the union raise a stink.