Trade association: Coffee is increasingly being locked away

According to the Saxony Trade Association, coffee has become the focus of shoplifters. It has become significantly more expensive in recent weeks due to poor harvests, said Managing Director René Glaser. Commercial shoplifters and gangs have apparently discovered coffee as a lucrative commodity to steal. The trend among retailers is to lock up coffee in display cases in a similar way to spirits.

This is not a good solution: "Experience has shown that sales of products that are placed in display cabinets and only handed out by staff on request drop noticeably." For many customers, the threshold is then higher. This is why locking away products is always the last step that retailers take when theft becomes rampant. Apart from coffee, he is not aware of any other product group that is now increasingly being locked away.

Glaser referred to the police crime statistics in Saxony, according to which the number of shopliftings has been increasing for years. "As an association, we also expect a high level of unreported crime." The retail research institute EHI even reckons that the number of unreported cases is over 98 percent.