SF stores are quietly removing this feature linked to retail theft

San Francisco stores have quietly disabled self-checkout recently, indicating a trend in “defensive retailing” that may soon spread across the city. While innovative measures to prevent theft at Bay Area retailers have been well documented this year, the changes to self-checkout are a more recent development. 

The Safeway at 1335 Webster St. in the Fillmore District closed down its self-checkout area a few months ago, an employee confirmed to SFGATE. Target on San Francisco’s Mission Street also has closed its self-checkout kiosks, rotating the screens backward to make them unusable to customers, SFGATE confirmed.

Walgreens also blamed retail crime for a string of San Francisco store closures in 2021. However, the New York Times has since reported that Walgreens’ chief financial officer admitted to exaggerating the issue. Many of these recent high-profile closures seem to have actually been attributable to a mix of factors, including having too many stores in certain markets, as SFGATE previously reported.

The removal of self-checkout is symptomatic of a larger trend, Daniel Conway, vice president of government relations for the California Grocers Association, told SFGATE.

“While I can’t speak for any one company, you see the trajectory of commerce over the last 10, 20, 5,000 years, it’s all about reducing friction for customers,” Conway said. “But now you’re seeing a countervailing trend: armed guards and Tide Pods locked up.”

Earlier this year, the Safeway in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood installed new loss-prevention tactics including barricades and receipt scanners that some customers described as “carceral,” as SFGATE previously reported. In July, the Fillmore Safeway installed security gates that only opened after a shopper scanned their receipt at self-checkout, presumably to deter shoplifting, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms).

“All the things put in place to reduce friction are now being putting back,” Conway said. “I can buy whatever I want on my phone, but now when I want to go to a store to buy it, it’s harder. It’s difficult to make a direct correlation, but I think in San Francisco it’s getting to the point that you are seeing stores closing, which is the ultimate form of defensive retailing.”

The removal of self-checkout lanes is not a trend isolated to San Francisco or even the Bay Area. Dollar General, a Tennessee-based retailer with a few Bay Area locations, recently announced it was beefing up staffing at its stores’ checkout areas to address rising rates of missing inventory, as CNN reported. Walmart also recently removed self-checkout machines at some stores in New Mexico, according to Business Insider. In October, Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull declared self-checkout a “failed experiment,” citing not only theft but also the unreliability and inefficiency of the technology.

It remains to be seen whether more Bay Area grocery stores will follow suit in closing self-checkout machines, but the topic of retail theft is only heating up. Recently, the new speaker of the California State Assembly, Robert Rivas, announced the formation of a select committee on retail theft. 

“Not only are we seeing this play out on the ground, but this has now reached the point that policymakers are going to step in and intervene,” Conway said. “This is about quality of life and public safety. This is just the beginning of this.”

Jessica Yadegaran contributed to this report.