If you’ve been to a local grocery store and experienced an absence of shopping baskets, you’re not alone. The plastic totes have been going missing from Pontiac establishments for several months now, and grocers aren’t quite sure what’s causing the trend.
Sylvie Beland has been the owner of the Metro grocery store in Mansfield for 13 years and said that she’d never had to order new baskets before. After using the same stack for more than a decade, they started going missing earlier this year.
“At the beginning it was gradually, then all of a sudden I’d say maybe two, three weeks ago, boom, we don’t have any more,” she said. “We had maybe, originally 15 of the baskets. Now I think we have one.”
Jaime Montejo, the owner of Jaime’s Valu-mart in Shawville said he has seen plenty of baskets go out the door as well, a trend he says began late last year.
“For me it’s been a while now, since before Christmas,” he said. “Just gradually [ . . . ] next thing you know you’ll only have half a stack left.”
He said he saw similar basket thefts at the previous store he managed in Ottawa, a behaviour he chalked up at least in part to customers not wanting to buy reusable bags after the federal government banned their use several years ago.
“I can’t speak for here, but at my previous store, the second that they changed it to where you had to buy a reusable bag, you had to pay for those, that’s when it started. I noticed at the other store a big uptick after that.”
A source with knowledge of the situation at the Shawville Giant Tiger told THE EQUITY that they’d seen a rash of pilfered baskets in recent months as well. The source requested anonymity as they are not cleared by the company to speak with media.
“[We’ve] lost about 20 baskets here,” they said. “Valu-mart I’m pretty sure has been a lot more than that. I think it’s more common there, because we don’t get a lot of foot traffic here, it’s more the customer that’s walking to the store.”
Beland wondered about the timing of the thefts.
“It’s been for a while that we don’t have the plastic bags either so, it’s a bit tricky,” she said. “Now knowing it’s the same problem in Shawville, it’s not just here . . . ”
The source at the Giant Tiger said they were being more careful with their current stock of baskets.
“[We’ve] replaced them, but we’re keeping more of an eye on them at the cash now, just so people aren’t leaving the building with them,” they said.
Montejo said that they had been keeping closer watch on the baskets.
“We’ve tried asking the cashiers [ . . . ] they’ve been asking [customers] to leave the baskets, so that they’re not taking them outside,” he said. “I don’t want my cashiers fighting with them. I have to get more, but it’s just, I don’t want to just keep wasting money, you know. If I have a need for other stuff I’ll order them too.”
None of the store representatives had witnessed any basket thefts first-hand and were all equally perplexed by the situation. Another thing they all agreed on: the steep cost of replacing them.
“They’re like almost $20 a basket. By the time you put the decals on them and everything, they’re not cheap,” the Giant Tiger source said.
