I don’t want to belabor a point, which is why I rarely avoid two articles on the same subject in rapid succession. And besides, my May writeup on shopping cart security breaches didn’t generate a whole lot of buzz, perhaps because most readers are one step ahead: I was pointing out a feature that was only new to me. And perhaps most others who regularly shop for groceries (i.e., the majority of adults) were already aware of that way a single wheel can l freeze if we push a cart too far away from its home territory on the parking lot. But if I am indeed beating a dead horse regarding shopping cart theft, but the mounting evidence suggests otherwise.
The color contrast on the photo to the left is poor, but for those who can’t read the sign, here’s the most important statement: “Our shopping carts will lock if removed from the store.” And this time around, it isn’t a supermarket; it’s the discount department store Marshalls. Judging from this sign, the enforcement is more stringent than the typical grocery store. A chain grocer like Giant or Safeway allows customers to continue to wheel their purchased, bagged merchandise into the parking lot, then load their cars, and finally push the cart into one of the docks that keep the carts consolidated rather than strewn across the parking lot. Meanwhile, Marshalls only allows shopping carts during browsing; once purchased, the cashier places the merchandise in bags which the customer must carry out to his or her car.
More stringent at Marshalls, but perfectly reasonable. The majority of goods sold at Marshalls are clothes, which are obviously considerably lighter and less bulky than the metal cans or glass jars commonly purchased at supermarkets. Yes, Marshalls does also sell homewares, décor, and some furnishings, but those purchases are probably a small percentage of the total volume. And, while a Marshalls location can make arrangements for anyone who purchases a heavy table or lamp, these sales are rare in 2024; most people would purchase online for home delivery. So Marshalls exercises its right to prevent cart theft by keeping them from leaving the premises. Not surprisingly, I have never seen a Marshalls cart tipped over on the side of a highway, or outside a homeless tent.
This basic sign demonstrates one critical point: different types of stores will exercise varying levels of scrutiny to prevent cart theft. And some must exercise restraint if they want to keep their customer base. No suburban grocery store, where most people arrive by car and expect to load up their trunks, can ever expect to subject customers to Marshalls’ interior frozen-wheel stringency. But what happens when multiple businesses share a strip mall parking lot, and they all have differing levels of shopping cart needs?
These two preceding photos come from northern Virginia, at two separate strip malls about a mile from one another: one in Fairfax County near the Alexandria line, one in far western Alexandria. This latter one—in the Alexandria municipal limits—is the Shoppes of Foxchase, a community-oriented shopping center with a major chain grocery store, Harris Teeter, as its primary anchor. (The center previously had a Walgreens as a secondary anchor, but that closed within the past year.) At the moment, I cannot conceive of any other tenants at the Shoppes of Foxchase that would likely offer shopping carts, but the vacant Walgreens offers enough leasable space for a new tenant that may someday provide them.
At this point, the yellow stripe painted on the parking lot clearly applies to the Harris Teeter, which stands some distance to the left, outside the camera’s reach. Harris Teeter has only provided docking stations for carts in about 50% of the total parking lot area. I have indicated this through the yellow line in the aerial below, where the viable parking for Harris Teeter is to the west:
And the management rightfully does not perceive any reason why a customer would need to park any further or drag a cart beyond this point. I didn’t feel like testing the shopping cart’s territorial range, but it’s reasonable to presume one of the wheels will lock if someone ventures past this yellow line. If this is the case, I congratulate Harris Teeter (or the shopping center’s management) for being much clearer in demarcating the “invisible fence”, beyond which a shopping cart is not allowed to travel. I didn’t get such a yellow-stripe indicator at the Giant supermarket in Springfield, Virginia a few weeks earlier, and I ended up dragging a shopping cart with a frozen wheel about thirty feet further, to my car parked outside the range.
This tactic will undoubtedly help prevent shopping cart “shrinkage” (to use the industry euphemism for theft), but it does require a reasonable investment: not only to install a tracking device and wheel-lock on every single cart in the grocery store’s inventory, but to demarcate the boundary that will activate the wheel lock, digitally. I’m not sure these demarcations need an underground wire (as characterizes the invisible fence used for dogs). Perhaps a transmitter signal from the store itself? That might be cheaper and certainly less intrusive than drilling and burying something under the concrete lot, albeit easier for a thief to subvert. Regardless of how a business installs these cart theft prevention devices, it requires investment that a big supermarket chain like Harris Teeter (owned by The Kroger Company since 2013) clearly possesses.
But how do smaller retailers prevent shopping cart theft? I’m not sure they do—at least not in the same way.
K Market is one of many international supermarkets in the northern Virginia suburbs. It’s located in Annandale, an unincorporated area in Fairfax County about four miles west of Shoppes of Foxchase, which has served as an unofficial Koreatown for the region for several decades. Though Annandale has no clearly defined political boundaries, locals have long associated its identity with a sizable Asian immigrant population, particularly in its semi-walkable town center where Columbia Pike (Virginia State Route 244) terminates at Little River Turnpike (VA 236).
An abundance of ethnic groceries operate in the Annandale area; K Market is merely among the larger ones, with aisles grouped primarily in three categories: Latin, Asian (east Asian), and Indian (southeast Asian), catering to the demographics in the area. Does it have to worry about shopping cart theft? Most likely it does; I have noticed entrances to ethnic groceries in the area often feature an array of candid photographs of people shopping, which I can only presume to indicate that these are suspected thieves that the security camera picked up. It’s an interesting tactic I have never seen at the big-name American corporate chains. But I also suspect it’s a more direct and less expensive strategy than hot-wiring the place, or installing all wheel-locks to all the shopping carts. Pivoting quickly to another international grocery store about two miles down the road from K Market, the primary tactic to prevent cart theft is structural rather than electronic.
Although the A-shaped devices vaguely resemble bike racks, they function more like bollards, offering enough width for customers to shimmy through with their bodies but not the shopping carts themselves. In short, they can exit the supermarket with their purchased goods, but after that, they have to pull the bags from the cart (no matter how heavy) and carry them to their cars. The parking lot does not offer docking stations. With these barriers, this supermarket offers a low-tech variant that is almost as restrictive as a Marshalls.
But that’s not the only enhanced security measure this supermarket has implemented:
This notice may have little to do with cart theft, but it certainly reflects a goal preventing shrinkage. Zero tolerance for people entering with backpacks, satchels, or other bags that can be fully zipped or enclosed, for obvious reasons. And, in the most blatant tactic I have seen, this same supermarket displays the justification for these measures:
I could be wrong, but let’s be frank: the first thing most people would surmise after seeing a wall of grainy, low-quality, seemingly clandestine photos is that these are likely thieves engaged in the act, captured by the supermarket’s cameras. It’s almost like a wall of “WANTED” listings. Most probably are not engaged in shopping cart theft (since this supermarket makes it nearly impossible to do so), but this means of tracking theft pushes a fine line toward vigilantism. I don’t want to accuse this particular small business of breaking the law—I’ve seen this at multiple supermarkets—but it probably stretches into territory where a private citizen is assuming a role typically reserved for law enforcement. Incidentally, I have noticed the photography “wall of shame” at multiple international supermarkets (presumably mostly locally owned), but I have never seen such a thing at a national mega-chain like Marshalls or Harris Teeter.
Returning to K Market, the original exterior shot revealed similar barricades, but they aren’t as aggressive. They are probably narrow enough to restrict carts, but a person committed to cart theft might maneuver around them; the presence of the ramp suggests that the store formerly allowed carts to venture into the lot. And, of course, one must consider whether the barricades allow sufficient clearance for wheelchairs. The ramp over the curb is there to accommodate them. But if the barricades are too narrow, they’d be a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Stepping a bit closer, the photo above shows K Market’s shopping carts, racked together at the entrance for immediate customer use. They lack the red sheath on one of the four wheels, or the placard near the basket indicating that wheels will lock. I don’t think they have any security features tethered to their mechanics, and a careful zoom-in will reveal why:
These don’t say K Market; they say Kmart! They’re second-hand shopping carts, probably at least a decade old. This reflects a topic I explored quite some time ago: when a dying chain liquidates its capital to a fledgling new mom-and-pop that doesn’t bother to strip away the old corporation’s branding. It doesn’t need to. Nine years ago, it didn’t matter that a taco shop appropriated a neon Q-shaped “OPEN” sign that had once been the signature neon in numerous Quiznos locations. After all, Quiznos had retreated from most of the country, shuttering about 80% of its stores. Now, in 2024, Kmart is all but extinct, so a new retailer can purchase the inventory of shopping carts, and most people won’t notice. “K Market” resembles “Kmart”, though the “K” in this Annandale grocer probably alludes to “Korea”. Best of all: the small-biz owners of KMarket (it current operates as this one location) may not have even needed to ship all the old Kmart carts from another location. Considering that this very site in Annandale was a Kmart as recently as spring 2018, they possibly were already sitting there.
The owners at K Market acquired ancient Kmart shopping carts; this much is obvious. Given the high propensity for cart theft in the modern era, and the fact that shopping carts survive for years, who can blame them? But it also reveals the cost-saving measures that small businesses must take, so that the vast (and growing) array of cart theft prevention infrastructure will continue to be the domain of Marshalls and Harris Teeter and other established companies with much greater equity. Small businesses often bear the brunt of criminality, not because they suffer a higher volume of merchandise loss but because they have less sophisticated or simply fewer resources to prevent it. In conclusion, large corporations are likely to show a lagging concern for a steady rise in crime, at least when compared to small biz, because the mega companies can more easily prevent, retard, or mitigate the direct impacts of crime on profitability. I wish K Market and the other international grocers of Annandale the best of luck. When it comes to raising awareness of shopping cart theft (or theft in general), it’s possible a company this size will be the squeaky wheel.
