A San Francisco hardware store is overhauling its shopping experience and requiring customers to be monitored to combat a surge in shoplifting.
Fredricksen Hardware and Paint is setting up a table at the entrance of its store to have customers escorted through the aisles instead of allowing them to freely roam around the store, according to multiple local reports.
“Shoplifting got too much. The snatch and grabs that is where it just had to stop. When they come in and rip stuff off the wall, it endangers employees and customers and that is why we had to slow it down a little bit with the table here,” Fredricksen Hardware manager Sam Black told ABC7.
Black told the San Francisco Standard he gave up on calling the police to report theft because of long wait times. He said the store’s issues began when homeless people were moved into a nearby hotel during the pandemic to shelter in place.
As thefts have increased, store employees have resorted to drilling pots and pans into the display wall to prevent shoplifters from snatching them.
Fredricksen Hardware is longtime fixture in San Francisco’s affluent Cow Hollow neighborhood, which is represented by San Francisco supervisor Catherine Stefani.
“This situation is tragic and embarrassing for our city, and it’s all the more reason to get serious about solving our police-staffing crisis. We need more police on our streets, and we need them now,” Stefani’s office told ABC7. She promised to hold hearings in March to push the city to fill police vacancies.
The store has been experimenting with the measure for the past three weeks, KRON4 reported. The table at the front of the store is set up for two hours in the morning and two hours at night to deter potential thieves.
Some residents on NextDoor expressed frustration with the new customer table at the store, while others expressed sympathy because of the city’s troubles with crime. San Francisco’s crime and disorder has caused businesses such as the toy store that helped to inspire the Toy Story movie franchise to close.
The owners of the Westfield mall in downtown San Francisco stopped making payments on their loan last year and decided to pull out of the city after Nordstrom closed its two downtown locations, including one in the mall. Whole Foods shut down its downtown San Francisco store after only one year because of the drug use and crime in the area.