Too Many Shoplifters And Not Enough Staff? Bottle Locks Are The Solution

If your liquor store is a small to medium size business you may not have a lot of payroll to pour into a large staff. You probably have no budget for a security person to monitor the activity in your building or even to stand watch at the front door. With such limitations, how do you manage to prevent shoplifters from stealing your product? Perhaps the question should be DO you stop people from shoplifting in your store? How much shortage do you experience in a year? Do you make shortage prevention a priority or do you hope it will get better next year? Stores that are already operating on tight budgets need to find some method to support loss prevention efforts without adding people. Smart strategies for reducing theft includes, using bottle locks and doing away with lockups or locking display cases. 

     Everyone is familiar with what a locking display case is, but not everyone is familiar with what a bottle lock is so allow me to digress for a moment. Bottle locks are re-usable devices that can be placed over the cap and neck of a bottle that prevents it from being opened. The store has a detachment key at the point(s) of sale that the cashier uses to remove the cap after the bottle is purchased. The locks are tamper proof, so they cannot be forced off in the store without a serious risk of breaking the bottle. They are also electronic article surveillance (EAS) compatible. Stores protected with EAS antennas will have an alarm set off if a shoplifter attempts to leave the store with stolen product.

Now before you think I have gone off the deep end by suggesting you can get rid of lock up display cases, let me explain myself. One strategy that shoplifters use on the stores they will hit is to divide and conquer. Many times shoplifters who work in pairs or small groups have already scouted the store and assessed how many employees are working or will work on a given shift. With that information in hand, they enter the store and move to different areas. An employee may not even realize the pair is together. One member of the team acts as a decoy, looking for items that are locked up and seeking assistance from someone with a key. This person may be loud or obnoxious, either, causing a scene, asking far too many questions or just being too friendly and talkative. While the distracted employee is trying to give great customer service, the second member of the team is concealing bottles in another area of the store and then walking out with stolen merchandise. It is possible, under the right circumstances that the shoplifter could re-enter and get another haul. Bottle locks allow employees the flexibility of not having to go to the lock up case to remove merchandise or show a bottle to someone.  When the bottle security devices are being used patrons can pick up and select the merchandise they want and carry them around the store. If staffed with a single employee, that employee can stay at the front of the store and ring up sales and monitor the front door alarm.

You may be thinking you don’t need to worry about bottle security after all because you always have at least two employees working at all times. Who does your merchandise stocking? Who tickets your merchandise or straightens the shelves? Who does the work in the stockroom? How do you work out your meal breaks for your staff, do you bring in a third employee?  When employees are task oriented, customer service tends not to be the focus of attention. Bottle Locks eliminate the concern over trying to keep up with all of the customers in the store at the same time. 

Bottle security for your liquor store isn’t an easy task. Adding additional employees for the sake of preventing theft is not the best answer. Install an EAS system and protect product with bottle locks and benefit from reduced stock shortage.

For more information on bottle locks, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547