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And a rise in membership-only retailers, like Costco. These retailers can make the use of biometrics and other shrink-prevention mechanisms a condition of membe

And a rise in membership-only retailers, like Costco. These retailers can make the use of biometrics and other shrink-prevention mechanisms a condition of membership & entry. Memberships also give retailers a way to kick miscreants out of an entire chain (vs. trespassing them from one location) and keep them out without risking a lawsuit for profiling or other verboten activities. If I opened a store in San Francisco tomorrow it would be some kind of membership only deal, maybe a co-op to appeal to local politics. No way would I allow the general public inside unless I were selling bulk concrete or something else equally impossible to shoplift.

nutjob2 1y ago
In what sense are you keeping the general public out? Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters. What makes more sense is store sized vending machines. Pay for what you want and it is dispensed. Order on site or online. I'm surprised no one is doing this on a wide scale yet.
- emchammer 1y ago
  Welcome to iCostco, I love you
- sbuttgereit 1y ago
  Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer? The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan. With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?
  - mothballed 1y ago
    I guess it's up for interpretation whether stealing from an Amazon van is easier or harder than stealing from a store. Is it more risky for the thief to bring the Amazon van to the hood, or the hood to the store?
    - sbuttgereit 1y ago
      The store tends to always be there, there is often times need to have a lot of them, and they're available at well known (even published) times whereas the van isn't always at the same places at the same time and doesn't even carry predictable goods... just that you know there will be goods. Sure you can guess or make your luck by waiting for the van or search for it in good spots... but the cost is higher for the criminal to try and count on such a thing. The truth is I expect stealing from a delivery van is ultimately simpler... or simply stealing the package off the porch easier still. The issue isn't the ease or difficulty. Where I expect consumer delivery businesses to do better in the face of theft is on the cost of theft (assuming a certain scale in the delivery business). Given the economies of scale of a warehouse and the delivery model vs traditional retail locations, I bet means the loss for any item stolen from the van is less than that of the same item stolen from a traditional retail location.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  People willing to pay a membership fee like Costco are probably less likely to be shoplifters, plus signing up for a membership means they have your info which further discouraged shoplifting, and then if they do catch you then it's easier to ban you from all their stores.
  - nutjob2 1y ago
    Shoplifters aren't going to follow any of those rules, they'll just use fake or stolen card or identities. But I think people still do it, I don't know if they still do it but Costco would check your receipt against what was in your trolley when I shopped there, if I remember correctly (10+ years ago).
    - tracker1 1y ago
      Costco now checks your picture against your card on entry.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        You don't need a card to enter nor even a friend with one. Just say you're going to the pharmacy. They don't check at the food court, either. Wouldn't surprise me if people have stole stuff via the big pizza boxes.
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      This isn't a situation that requires a social contract where they follow some rules. The ease of shoplifters "not following the rules" with fake/stolen identities will simply approach the experience of someone trying to do the same with an airline ticket.
    - rck 1y ago
      In 2023, shrinkage at Costco was less than 0.2%, vs a US national average of 1.44%. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-winning-war-against-retail-120000001.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-winning-war-against-re...
    - 1y ago
- ajcp 1y ago
  ->store sized vending machines Which was literally the shopping experience before Selfridges "revolutionized" the department store experience by letting customers have direct access to goods for sale.[0] Before that everything was behind a counter and you have to be served and monitored. Even the grocery store was a similar experience, whereby you would give the clerk your list and they would select everything for you. Everything that is old is new again. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1850–1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1...
  - ryanmcbride 1y ago
    I'd be perfectly content with this model, but the problem is then they'd have to hire employees to do things! Stores would much rather have us pick everything ourselves, checkout ourselves, and have our cars remote detonated by robots automatically if the crime computer deems it appropriate. That way they only have to hire two employees. One to drag carts around the parking lot and one to drag keys to all the locked cabinets of soap and shampoo and diapers and whatnot.
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      The main issue is spiky demand, you’d have keep a cadre of employees around to minimize peak latency. Offloading tasks to the shopper scales well with usage.
      - aerostable_slug 1y ago
        Also revenue loss due to fewer impulse purchases. You could still have candy bars in the line to get to the counter, but it's not the same thing as merchandising in aisles and on end caps. With robots doing the picking and packing the employee problem becomes reduced, but it might take some serious innovation to reliably get customers to leave with more products than they went to the store to buy.
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    Click and collect has made grocery shopping almost tolerable in my household. It seem a modern take on the pre-Selfridges model.
- tristor 1y ago
  > Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters. This is only true in ways that don't matter, because you count "any population" being large enough to obviously include miscreants. Most people do not shoplift, and therefore there are MANY ways to slice a population which will not include shoplifters.
mothballed 1y ago
It might be interesting to have some kind of "shoplifter insurance" card paired with facial recognition you have to show to enter, rather than a store-specific membership. If you steal it is an "at-fault incident" that raises your rates, but no need to deal with the legal system for the store to get the money back. People that steal a lot would have high insurance rates and would eventually have to order all their food from one of those stores with the prison bars in front. People that don't steal would have minimal to no insurance rates and would not be paying shrinkage for those that do.
- gus_massa 1y ago
  That's nice until you get a false accusation and there is no formal procedure to appeal the ban.
  - gruez 1y ago
    You can still have an arbitration system like how credit card chargebacks are handled.
    - TuringNYC 1y ago
      >> You can still have an arbitration system like how credit card chargebacks are handled. You can have that, but it doesnt exist, so it isnt helpful. We can have many good things, but unless they are --paired together-- with the potentially bad things, you end up in a bad place. Talk to anyone who has been randomly deplatformed off Uber, CitiBike, etc.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - Alive-in-2025 1y ago
    And this problem of no appeal possible hits you lots of places online. youtube copyright strikes (great way to attack your enemies), reddit bans, twitter bans. YouTube bans are a killer for a lot of people who support themselves that way.

nutjob2 1y ago

In what sense are you keeping the general public out? Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters. What makes more sense is store sized vending machines. Pay for what you want and it is dispensed. Order on site or online. I'm surprised no one is doing this on a wide scale yet.

emchammer 1y ago
Welcome to iCostco, I love you
sbuttgereit 1y ago
Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer? The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan. With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?
- mothballed 1y ago
  I guess it's up for interpretation whether stealing from an Amazon van is easier or harder than stealing from a store. Is it more risky for the thief to bring the Amazon van to the hood, or the hood to the store?
  - sbuttgereit 1y ago
    The store tends to always be there, there is often times need to have a lot of them, and they're available at well known (even published) times whereas the van isn't always at the same places at the same time and doesn't even carry predictable goods... just that you know there will be goods. Sure you can guess or make your luck by waiting for the van or search for it in good spots... but the cost is higher for the criminal to try and count on such a thing. The truth is I expect stealing from a delivery van is ultimately simpler... or simply stealing the package off the porch easier still. The issue isn't the ease or difficulty. Where I expect consumer delivery businesses to do better in the face of theft is on the cost of theft (assuming a certain scale in the delivery business). Given the economies of scale of a warehouse and the delivery model vs traditional retail locations, I bet means the loss for any item stolen from the van is less than that of the same item stolen from a traditional retail location.
TulliusCicero 1y ago
People willing to pay a membership fee like Costco are probably less likely to be shoplifters, plus signing up for a membership means they have your info which further discouraged shoplifting, and then if they do catch you then it's easier to ban you from all their stores.
- nutjob2 1y ago
  Shoplifters aren't going to follow any of those rules, they'll just use fake or stolen card or identities. But I think people still do it, I don't know if they still do it but Costco would check your receipt against what was in your trolley when I shopped there, if I remember correctly (10+ years ago).
  - tracker1 1y ago
    Costco now checks your picture against your card on entry.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      You don't need a card to enter nor even a friend with one. Just say you're going to the pharmacy. They don't check at the food court, either. Wouldn't surprise me if people have stole stuff via the big pizza boxes.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    This isn't a situation that requires a social contract where they follow some rules. The ease of shoplifters "not following the rules" with fake/stolen identities will simply approach the experience of someone trying to do the same with an airline ticket.
  - rck 1y ago
    In 2023, shrinkage at Costco was less than 0.2%, vs a US national average of 1.44%. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-winning-war-against-retail-120000001.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-winning-war-against-re...
  - 1y ago
ajcp 1y ago
->store sized vending machines Which was literally the shopping experience before Selfridges "revolutionized" the department store experience by letting customers have direct access to goods for sale.[0] Before that everything was behind a counter and you have to be served and monitored. Even the grocery store was a similar experience, whereby you would give the clerk your list and they would select everything for you. Everything that is old is new again. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1850–1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1...
- ryanmcbride 1y ago
  I'd be perfectly content with this model, but the problem is then they'd have to hire employees to do things! Stores would much rather have us pick everything ourselves, checkout ourselves, and have our cars remote detonated by robots automatically if the crime computer deems it appropriate. That way they only have to hire two employees. One to drag carts around the parking lot and one to drag keys to all the locked cabinets of soap and shampoo and diapers and whatnot.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    The main issue is spiky demand, you’d have keep a cadre of employees around to minimize peak latency. Offloading tasks to the shopper scales well with usage.
    - aerostable_slug 1y ago
      Also revenue loss due to fewer impulse purchases. You could still have candy bars in the line to get to the counter, but it's not the same thing as merchandising in aisles and on end caps. With robots doing the picking and packing the employee problem becomes reduced, but it might take some serious innovation to reliably get customers to leave with more products than they went to the store to buy.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  Click and collect has made grocery shopping almost tolerable in my household. It seem a modern take on the pre-Selfridges model.
tristor 1y ago
> Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters. This is only true in ways that don't matter, because you count "any population" being large enough to obviously include miscreants. Most people do not shoplift, and therefore there are MANY ways to slice a population which will not include shoplifters.

mothballed 1y ago

It might be interesting to have some kind of "shoplifter insurance" card paired with facial recognition you have to show to enter, rather than a store-specific membership. If you steal it is an "at-fault incident" that raises your rates, but no need to deal with the legal system for the store to get the money back. People that steal a lot would have high insurance rates and would eventually have to order all their food from one of those stores with the prison bars in front. People that don't steal would have minimal to no insurance rates and would not be paying shrinkage for those that do.

gus_massa 1y ago
That's nice until you get a false accusation and there is no formal procedure to appeal the ban.
- gruez 1y ago
  You can still have an arbitration system like how credit card chargebacks are handled.
  - TuringNYC 1y ago
    >> You can still have an arbitration system like how credit card chargebacks are handled. You can have that, but it doesnt exist, so it isnt helpful. We can have many good things, but unless they are --paired together-- with the potentially bad things, you end up in a bad place. Talk to anyone who has been randomly deplatformed off Uber, CitiBike, etc.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- Alive-in-2025 1y ago
  And this problem of no appeal possible hits you lots of places online. youtube copyright strikes (great way to attack your enemies), reddit bans, twitter bans. YouTube bans are a killer for a lot of people who support themselves that way.