Confronted with “more economic challenges than ever before,” Stop & Shop is calling on Congress to pass legislation to stop organized retail crime, an issue it says is causing prices to climb.
The Quincy-based regional supermarket chain says brick-and-mortar retailers in Boston and elsewhere in the Bay State are “struggling with the vast impact of organized retail crime,” and action is needed to prevent it.
President Roger Wheeler has revealed the issue in a letter sent to members of the Massachusetts delegation in response to an inquiry about potential price gouging at Stop & Shop’s urban store locations.
“Retail theft is a major concern for retailers like us, and we need legislators to act swiftly by advancing legislation … to help protect our customers and associates,” Wheeler said in the letter, sent on Wednesday. “Our business’s ability to continue to invest in our stores, our customers, and our communities relies on Congressional action to stop organized retail crime.”
Wheeler highlighted the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, reintroduced last month, that would look to “crack down on flash mob robberies and intricate retail theft schemes.”
The legislation, reintroduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), would specifically establish an organized retail and supply chain crime coordination center within the Department of Homeland Security.
It would combine “expertise from state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as retail industry representatives,” while also creating “new tools to assist in federal investigation and prosecution of organized retail crime, and help recapture lost goods and proceeds.”
More than 84% of retailers across the country have reported that violence and aggression from criminal activities have become more of a concern since 2022, according to the National Retail Federation.
The national federal estimates that larceny incidents increased by 93% in 2023 compared to 2019.
In his letter, Wheeler highlighted how Stop & Shop follows the “common practice” in the retail industry that pricing varies by location. He pointed to factors such as rent, the size of the store, how much it takes to transport products to the store, and “shrink (including losses due to theft).”
Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern wrote a letter earlier this month to Wheeler, pressing for “answers as to why prices appear to be higher for groceries in low-income communities.”
Boston youth volunteers with the Hyde Square Task Force discovered that Stop & Shop charged 18% more on 17 identical items at its Jamaica Plain store than at its suburban Dedham location, prompting lawmakers to raise concerns last year.
The company responded by lowering prices in JP, but Warren said this month that “we’re still seeing higher prices for families at other inner-city locations. It’s no coincidence that working-class communities are getting stuck with sky-high prices.”
“Stop & Shop does not under any circumstances take a neighborhood’s demographics into consideration when setting prices,” Wheeler stated in his letter. “The specific process for setting prices is highly confidential and competitively sensitive for any major retail business.”
Wheeler vowed that “by year-end 2025, prices will be lowered at all Stop & Shop locations in the Commonwealth.” The company has more than 60 stores across the Bay State.
Stop & Shop closed eight of its grocery stores in Massachusetts last fall as part of a consolidation effort in which the chain shuttered 32 underperforming stores across the Northeast.
The Retailers Association of Massachusetts is supporting the federal Combating Organized Retail Crime Act and bills at the State House “designed to provide in-state stakeholders with additional statutory tools necessary to address specific activity associated with ORC,” General Counsel Ryan C. Kearney told the Herald.
RAM estimated in 2023 that organized criminal theft activity costs Massachusetts retailers about $2 billion a year. In 2018, the state Legislature increased the felony threshold for larceny from $250 to $1,200.
A pair of Taunton women were indicted in 2023 on charges that they stole nearly $27,000 in Stop & Shop products from of stores during a three-month-long organized, counterfeit coupon operation.
“Organized retail crime continues to be a growing problem nationally, with retailers across the country experiencing unprecedented levels of theft and violence in their stores,” Kearney told the Herald.