- Schnucks customers will soon be unable to purchase more than 10 products at its checkout.
- “We expect there will be some benefits from stopping the theft,” the Midwest retailer said.
- Many large retail chains are rethinking their self-service strategies.
Midwest grocery chain Schnucks is putting a cap on how many items customers can buy at its checkout.
Starting Thursday, self-checkout lanes at all Schnucks stores will be limited to customers purchasing 10 items or fewer, the retailer confirmed to Business Insider. Customers with more than 10 products will be redirected to its staffed checkout lanes, she said.
“While the primary intent is to improve customer service and checkout efficiency, we expect there will be some benefits from stopping theft,” Schnucks said in a statement. “Because self-deletes are more prone to theft, this item limit will help us keep our costs down while keeping prices lower for our customers.”
Schnucks operates 115 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. It told BI that all of its stores had self-checkouts, with between four and eight on average at each location.
“When self-cancels were first introduced, they were intended for smaller orders,” Schnucks continued in its statement. “Over time, larger orders have started moving through self-checks and we hope to address that concern.”
Retailers across the U.S. are rethinking their self-checkout strategies as companies fear they're making it easier for theft.
In some cases, shrinking, as it's known in the industry, is intentional—customers intentionally don't scan certain items or place them as lower-cost products—while sometimes it happens by accident.
Walmart is trying to combat theft at self-checkouts by using technology that alerts staff if it detects a problem, such as an unscanned item, but current and former employees told BI that it led to awkward confrontations when they had to approach customers.
And Costco is cracking down on the sharing of membership cards at self-checkouts, asking staff to check people's cards.
Research also shows that some customers find self-deletions alienating.
Dollar General said it is beefing up staff in its checkout areas to provide more customer service.
“We started relying heavily this year on self-checkout,” CEO Todd Vasos said in December, noting that it should only be used “as a secondary checkout vehicle.”
