Supermarket giant Coles is planning to shut a store on Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, a location notorious for its challenges with crime and antisocial behaviour.<\/p>\n
The street \u2013 which has once again become the focus of outcry after witnessing two separate machete attack incidents over the weekend \u2013 sits opposite Melbourne\u2019s Flinders Street station. The Coles Central store on it is just a few doors down from a Woolworths Metro.<\/p>\n
A company spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph that the decision to exit at the end of its lease in 2027 is strictly commercial. The move would see the supermarket operate just one site in the CBD, at Melbourne Central.<\/p>\n
Coles recently announced the extension of its partnership with Crime Stoppers Victoria to combat retail crime. \u201cAcross the retail sector, rising incidents of theft, abuse, and aggression are creating increasingly challenging environments for frontline workers,\u201d a supermarket spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Martin Smithson, Coles\u2019 GM of supermarket operations, added: \u201cThe growth in retail violence is absolutely unacceptable, and our partnership with Crimestoppers is just one of the ways we\u2019re addressing it. Industry, retailers, government, police, we all need to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victoria, especially Melbourne, has been at the centre of\u00a0Australia\u2019s growing retail crime problem. In 2025, 95,181 criminal incidents in retail locations were recorded in the state, a 25.7 per cent increase over the past decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trend is clear. Retail crime unfortunately continues to escalate in Victoria. It is persistent, it is widespread, and it continues to put frontline workers and customers at risk,\u201d said the Australian Retail Council\u2019s CEO, Chris Rodwell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supermarket giant Coles is planning to shut a store on Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, a location notorious for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11862,260,6028],"class_list":["post-59245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-coles","tag-melbourne","tag-retail-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}