Why it’s harder to find shopping baskets in some supermarkets these days

When you go to the grocery store, are you more of a shopping cart person or a basket person? Probably depends how much you need to buy, right? 

But at some stores, it’s getting harder to find handheld baskets. 

At a Safeway in Baltimore, Maryland, recently, an employee said the store stopped providing baskets because people kept stealing them. The city banned single-use plastic bags a few years ago and stores started charging for paper bags. A spokesperson for Albertsons — Safeway’s parent company — declined to comment.  

But many stores have stopped providing hand baskets, according to food industry analyst Phil Lempert, editor of Supermarket Guru.

“[People are] just walking right out with them and not returning them,” Lempert said. “That’s the primary reason, and frankly they’re expensive.”

Shopping baskets cost around $6 to $20 apiece, depending on the source.

Stores in New Jersey, Connecticut and Colorado reported a rise in basket theft after plastic bag bans took effect.

But Lempert said there’s another reason retailers are getting rid of hand baskets: “The secondary reason is more psychological: That if, in fact, you go in with a small basket, you’re going to buy less.”

Think about it. Have you ever stopped shopping when your basket got too full or too heavy?

“I can speak from personal experience that, you know, an overflowing hand basket somewhat limits the amount of items you can purchase,” said Robert Harling, CEO of Gatekeeper Systems, which sells loss prevention solutions to retailers.

He said some of his customers have reported an increase in basket theft after they started using anti-theft technology on shopping carts.

“That would lead you to believe that a shoplifter who was using a shopping cart to steal, now they’ve pivoted to a hand basket,” Harling said.

But as stores take steps to reduce shoplifting by ditching shopping baskets or locking products behind plexiglass, they risk alienating some customers — like Greg Asplund, an elementary school assistant principal in Denver, Colorado.

“I almost feel like it’s this general degradation of going shopping,” Asplund said. “When you don’t have somewhere to put your things while you’re shopping, or you have to go through all these hoops to get to the items you want to buy, it just makes the experience just much less pleasant.”

Phil Goodell, whose company, the Good L Corporation, makes shopping baskets in La Vergne, Tennessee, said retailers would be foolish to get rid of them altogether. People are more likely to buy stuff on impulse if they have somewhere to put it.

“You know, your hands can carry two items,” Goodell said. “For a grocery store, it’s 9.6% more sales every extra item.”

He suggests when retailers catch someone carrying their stuff out in a basket, they should just offer to sell them the basket too.