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Theft, Retrieval, and Repair...
ONGOING PROBLEMS WITHIN THE GROCERY INDUSTRY AS IT RELATES TO SHOPPING CART THEFT, RETRIEVAL AND REPAIR:
Each year stores
spend millions of dollars worldwide attempting to keep their stock of
shopping carts in service. This includes replacement, cleaning, retrieval,
and repair.
During peak hours, retailers maintain excess cart inventories of approximately
25% more than actually needed, in order to have an adequate inventory
of carts available for peak hours.
Many shoppers “borrow” carts to transport their purchases
so retailers contract regularly for cart retrieval services. These retrieval
companies search the surrounding neighborhoods several times daily,
charging the stores approximately $1.00 a cart for any retrieved. On
an annual basis this can amount to thousands of dollars per site.
Repair and cleaning for the carts retrieved can also amount to thousands
of dollars per year. Yearly these additional costs can range from a
few thousand dollars per store to more than $100,000.
Typically the financial losses associated with carts include the following:
cart retrieval expenses, outright theft, excess inventory, and cleaning
& repair costs
The above can cost each store over $20,000 per year, and some may even
lose more than $100,000 per year.
Based on these approximate costs with pre-tax profit margins of only
2% yearly, the average store with $15,000 in lost carts must sell $750,000
worth of groceries to recover the annual cart related losses.
For example, a chain of 100 stores with these issues occurring on 45%
of their sites must sell over $33,000,000 in groceries per year to recover
the amount lost in carts. Because the inventory of carts is constantly
in flux, retailers often maintain inventories of 10-20% over the actual
need, ensuring that during peak hours, enough carts will be available
for customers.
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