How the heck have we got to this stage in the UK?

The cost-of-living crisis has seen a steep increase in shoplifting and consequently in measures taken by supermarket giants to guard goods from being nicked.

Alcohol, meat and electrical goods are all routinely fitted with anti-theft tags or stored in secure cabinets.

However a Tesco store was recently spotted taking things to the next level – by placing chocolate bars in plastic cases.

The 120g Cadbury Dairy Milk caramel bars cost £2.10 each, or £1.75 for Clubcard holders – and now must be released by staff at the checkout before purchase.

Shoppers reacted with bemusement to the measure, which was spotted at a store in Seven Kings in Ilford, East London.

One, Kash Ali said: ‘Times are hard, people will nick anything.’

‘The case cost more than the chocolate bar’, another named Angela said.

A source from the supermarket chain said that security decisions are taken on a store-by-store basis and denied it was new policy.

Tesco locks up £1.75 Cadbury chocolate bars in security boxes



Posted by OneNormalBloke

37 comments

  1. The high cost of living doesn’t excuse being a thieving herbert though, does it? Was theft this rife during rationing in the 40’s & 50’s?

    Nope…

  2. I’m not sure if this is related to cost of living. I would rather explain this with what early teenagers currently see as a fun game and what kind of consequences they face if they are caught playing these _games_ .

  3. > The 120g Cadbury Dairy Milk caramel bars cost £2.10 each

    Bugger me. That’s the real daylight robbery!

  4. Apart from genuine morals and common decency, there’s actually no threat or down side to stealing low value items any more.

    So this is just gonna get worse, unfortunately it’s going to start happening more and more to the corner and small shop owners as these large groups have the means to add layers of protection like these annoying little boxes

  5. Tesco would rather have thieves walk out with a trolley of booze than being robbed of a £1.75 chocolate bar.

  6. People are not stealing due to the cost of living crisis.

    We spend a far small portion of our money on food that we have in almost any period of our history.

  7. Won’t be long till shops are like argos. You order from a screen and collect from a counter.

  8. It’s not new. When I used to work at co-op people would come in and just empty our sweet section.

  9. I was born and raised in the UK but have lived overseas for the last 15 years, watching from afar as the country took a huge downward turn. I was back at home in July, visiting my mum in Cambridge. Paying at the self checkout in Tescos one day, I was shocked to see the guy next to me just fill up his backpack with booze and walk out without paying! Times are hard. But morals are a choice.

  10. I was in an Aldi not so long ago and they’d shut the doors so a guy with a back pack full of stuff he’d grabbed couldn’t get out.

    After a stand off he realised he wasn’t going to get out (I’m assuming before the police turned up but would they come out to that sort of thing?), so he emptied the contents of his ruck sack on the floor and was let out

    It was a load of toblerones!

    Surely there are more worthwhile things to rob?

  12. Stealing makes the city of living crisis worse for everyone else.

  13. This is where you‘ve got to in parts of the UK.

    Where I live nothing is sealed or security tagged apart from spirits, and even then they’re open to take without needing an assistent to open a cabinet for you,

    But then I do live in an area where the demographic is aging and trustworthy – I’m well into my fifties and shopping here makes me feel like a young man.

  14. If it stops people eating that absolutely cheap slop then great

  16. We have a justice system that doesnt punish thieves so obviously this is exploited by gangs to steal on a massive scale from shops. The UK govmenent just dumb

  17. So low trust as a society now, to get to this. Was in Norway a couple of years ago for business and it felt insanely high trust in comparison, like looking back at 2008 UK.

  18. In about 10 years the bars will be so small that people will be able to snort them

  19. Tesco don’t do this everywhere, the culture in Ilford must be different – which would be unsurprising given the demographics.

  20. More than £2 for a chocolate bar now? I don’t blame the robbers!

  21. Dunno why the thieves are nicking them, Cadbury’s have been enshitified.

  23. If this happens in ASDA, I’ll be “sorry for disturbing you, can you get this out of the box please?” when I don’t want to bother anyone when I’m shopping.

  25. Smack and crack addicts steal the chocolate to use the foil and sell the rest to local independent convenience stores to buy more smack and crack, the values immaterial.

  26. Good. Those ‘chocolates’ aren’t even classed as chocolate anymore. Deserve to be behind bars.

  28. It has nothing to do with an increase in living costs and everything to do with a lower standard of society. Notice how nobody is stealing the fresh fruit and vegetables?

  29. Not 100% what the whole point of these lock boxes are.

    I was in Tesco the otherday and saw they had locked behind a cage lots of various wines… Right next to the cage was wine priced HIGHER than what was in the cage??? I couldn’t understand it?

    Would the point be locking away the most expensive items? OR is it down to insurance? Like Tesco insurance won’t cover replacing certain bottles? It really boggled my mind.

  30. It’s so bad now that I spend most of my shift just removing security tags for customers which makes us so much busier than we need to be

  31. Maybe they could arrest, charge, prosecute and jail shoplifters?

  32. Remember when they did this with Lurpak during Covid? Turned out they lost more money on trying to prevent people stealing Lurpak than what they would have lost to thieves if they left the Lurpak unprotected lol.

  33. Cadbury chocolate is a high theft line, so I’m not surprised.

  34. Even good old Freddo will be locked up in his own personal prison soon 🐸

  35. I’m so glad I now do my shopping at Costco, somewhere that filters the riff raff out

  37. This has nothing to do with the CoL. You don’t steal chocolate bars because your starving.

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