San Francisco Safeway stores install security gates for self-checkout

San Francisco Safeway stores have installed security gates at self-checkout kiosks in an attempt to stop thieves.

Shoppers using the self-service lines at a number of Safeway stores in the Bay Area now need to scan their receipts on an automated plastic gate before they can leave the store.

High levels of theft at Safeway stores and other retailers across San Francisco have prompted merchants to increase security measures. 

Stores across the county have fallen victim to a so-called ‘retail apocalypse’ sparked by a perfect storm of high inflation, surging crime rates and low footfall.

But the closures have disproportionately affected San Francisco where crime has shot up by 15 percent – according to figures from the city’s police department.

The city is also affected by a state-wide shoplifting law that downgraded stealing goods worth less than $950 from a felony to a far less serious misdemeanor crime.

‘Recent changes were made at select Safeway stores in the Bay Area to maintain a safe and welcoming shopping experience for our customers and associates given the increasing amount of theft,’ a Safeway spokesperson said in a statement Monday.

‘Those updates include operational changes to the front end of the stores to deter shoplifting. Like other local businesses, we are working on ways to curtail escalating theft so we can ensure the wellbeing of our employees and foster a welcoming environment for our customers. These long-planned security improvements were implemented with those goals in mind,’ the spokesperson said.

Safeway shopper Peter Thurston noticed the new device last week at the Webster Street Safeway store.

‘It’s a new system that they’re trying out. Time will tell if they are going to be successful or not,’ Thurston told CBS News.

He lives close to the store and shops there twice a week.

In recent years, Safeway’s location on Market Street in the city’s Castro neighborhood installed automatic gates in a bid to prevent thieves from leaving the store with carts of stolen items. 

Barriers around the Market Street store’s self-checkout area have also previously pointed shoppers towards a single exit.

Last year, the city’s police said they were installing officers in several stores to apprehend shoplifters, including in Safeways.

Around a month later, police said they had made about 60 arrests.

The gate at Safeway in the Western Addition is the company’s latest attempt to prevent shoplifting and loitering at its Western Addition outpost. 

Last month, the store blasted out classical music overnight from a bullhorn in the parking lot to deter people from loitering, which led to several complaints. 

The Webster Street store also has armed guards at entrances and uses security cameras to reduce crime.

Century-old Goorin Bros. haberdashery has joined a host of stores shutting in San Francisco’s Union Square, amid widespread crime and plummeting footfall.

The hat boutique has become the latest casualty of the so-called ‘retail apocalypse’ gripping downtown San Francisco.

‘It’s never an easy decision but it was time,’ a company representative wrote in a statement. 

‘There are a number of reasons I’m sure but really it was our smallest location and there’s just been a shift in business plan/direction over the last few years.’

The company has several stores across the country, including one in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.

A sales associate at the North Beach location told the San Francisco Chronicle that store workers were mostly kept in the dark about the closure – and did not know if it was permanent.

It comes as a growing number of stores have moved from the area – as widespread theft and homelessness has meant that even candy has to be locked away from customers.

Westfield shopping center announced it had stopped making mortgage payments last month due to crime and tanking sales – defaulting on its $558million loan and handing it back to the lender.

This was sparked by the decision from Nordstrom, the mall’s anchor tenant, to close next month – which Westfield blamed in large part on ‘unsafe conditions’ and a ‘lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity’.

Other major firms such as Banana Republic, Office Depot, Old Navy, H&M and Whole Foods Market have either left the area or announced plans to leave in the coming months.

AT&T announced that it will close its flagship store on August 1 in yet another blow to the city’s struggling retail sector.

Last month, Park Hotels & Resorts announced it was stopping mortgage payments on two hotels, the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco and the 1,024-room Park 55, saying: ‘Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges.’

The city has also suffered particularly badly from the rise in remote working after the pandemic, which has decimated footfall in the financial district and Union Square areas and left office blocks deserted.

Office vacancies reached a record high of 31 percent in May, enough space for 92,000 workers.

In April, Salesforce said it will leave its eponymous 30-story Salesforce East building in downtown, where around 1,000 staff had worked before the pandemic.

Leaders estimate the situation will contribute to a budget shortfall of $1.3 billion in five years. The decline in property tax revenue alone could cost nearly $200 million per year, according to a worst-case scenario drawn up by the city’s chief accountant.

The city is also facing rampant drug use – with many dealers plying their trade openly on the streets.

As a result, city figures show there were more than 268 drug overdose deaths in the first six months of 2023 alone – a 41 percent increase on last year.

A disturbing recent report showed 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent.

Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city’s Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.

In April, Whole Foods said it would shut its flagship store in downtown San Francisco ‘for the time being’ to ensure staff safety.

‘If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location,’ a spokesperson said.

Similarly, a Target store in the city has been forced to lock up more of its products to stave off thieves.

An employee at the location recently said it was being robbed as often as ‘every ten minutes’. 

California governor Gavin Newsom has decided to double the presence of state police to deal with San Francisco’s crime and fentanyl crises, as he admitted that his own businesses have been burglarized.

The Democrat said the open-air drug dealing in the city is ‘unacceptable,’ and that his own wine and hospitality businesses have been robbed at least half a dozen times as the city goes through a crime and fentanyl epidemic.

Newsom’s PlumpJack Group company, founded in 1992, owns three restaurants, wineries, a boutique hotel, and bars in San Francisco. 

The city’s former mayor put the company in a blind trust when he became governor, which bans him from any involvement in its operations.

One of his wine shops, the PlumpJack Wine & Spirits store, was targeted by burglars at least four times in 2021.

Newsom said: ‘My biggest gripe right now in San Francisco has been, frankly, we’re not enforcing existing laws … we’re not prosecuting the law breakers. Judges, DAs, the whole panoply — I want to see people held accountable for breaking the law.’

The governor added that while he’s ‘not going back to the old, failed war on drugs,’ he’s also ‘not naïve about the fact that we’ve got to triage what’s happening on the streets’. 

As part of the new plan to tackle the city’s overdose crisis, Newsom will also increase the number of California National Guard members working in the city with local authorities. They will work with mayor London Breed to create a comprehensive plan for fighting open-air drug markets.

There will also be new unannounced ‘surges’ in crime hotpots in the middle of the night by state Highway Patrol officials.

‘Personnel assigned to the expanded operation are expected to include some of the more than 100 new CHP officers slated to graduate from the CHP Academy this week, as well as active officers within the CHP’s Golden Gate Division,’ said the governor’s office.

It’s an expansion of a previous plan set in motion in April by the governor.