Confronted with “more economic challenges than ever before,” Cease & Store is looking on Congress to cross laws to cease organized retail crime, a difficulty it says is inflicting costs to climb.
The Quincy-based regional grocery store chain says brick-and-mortar retailers in Boston and elsewhere within the Bay State are “struggling with the vast impact of organized retail crime,” and motion is required to forestall it.
President Roger Wheeler has revealed the problem in a letter despatched to members of the Massachusetts delegation in response to an inquiry about potential worth gouging at Cease & Store’s city retailer areas.
“Retail theft is a major concern for retailers like us, and we need legislators to act swiftly by advancing legislation … to help protect our customers and associates,” Wheeler stated within the letter, despatched on Wednesday. “Our business’s ability to continue to invest in our stores, our customers, and our communities relies on Congressional action to stop organized retail crime.”
Wheeler highlighted the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, reintroduced final month, that may look to “crack down on flash mob robberies and intricate retail theft schemes.”
The laws, reintroduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), would particularly set up an organized retail and provide chain crime coordination middle inside the Division of Homeland Safety.
It will mix “expertise from state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as retail industry representatives,” whereas additionally creating “new tools to assist in federal investigation and prosecution of organized retail crime, and help recapture lost goods and proceeds.”
Greater than 84% of outlets throughout the nation have reported that violence and aggression from legal actions have turn into extra of a priority since 2022, based on the Nationwide Retail Federation.
The nationwide federal estimates that larceny incidents elevated by 93% in 2023 in comparison with 2019.
In his letter, Wheeler highlighted how Cease & Store follows the “common practice” within the retail business that pricing varies by location. He pointed to elements resembling lease, the scale of the shop, how a lot it takes to move merchandise to the shop, and “shrink (including losses due to theft).”
Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern wrote a letter earlier this month to Wheeler, urgent for “answers as to why prices appear to be higher for groceries in low-income communities.”
Boston youth volunteers with the Hyde Sq. Process Drive found that Cease & Store charged 18% extra on 17 similar objects at its Jamaica Plain retailer than at its suburban Dedham location, prompting lawmakers to lift issues final yr.
The corporate responded by decreasing costs in JP, however Warren stated this month that “we’re still seeing higher prices for families at other inner-city locations. It’s no coincidence that working-class communities are getting stuck with sky-high prices.”
“Stop & Shop does not under any circumstances take a neighborhood’s demographics into consideration when setting prices,” Wheeler said in his letter. “The specific process for setting prices is highly confidential and competitively sensitive for any major retail business.”
Wheeler vowed that “by year-end 2025, prices will be lowered at all Stop & Shop locations in the Commonwealth.” The corporate has greater than 60 shops throughout the Bay State.
Cease & Store closed eight of its grocery shops in Massachusetts final fall as a part of a consolidation effort through which the chain shuttered 32 underperforming shops throughout the Northeast.
The Retailers Affiliation of Massachusetts is supporting the federal Combating Organized Retail Crime Act and payments on the State Home “designed to provide in-state stakeholders with additional statutory tools necessary to address specific activity associated with ORC,” Common Counsel Ryan C. Kearney advised the Herald.
RAM estimated in 2023 that organized legal theft exercise prices Massachusetts retailers about $2 billion a yr. In 2018, the state Legislature elevated the felony threshold for larceny from $250 to $1,200.
A pair of Taunton girls had been indicted in 2023 on prices that they stole almost $27,000 in Cease & Store merchandise from of shops throughout a three-month-long organized, counterfeit coupon operation.
“Organized retail crime continues to be a growing problem nationally, with retailers across the country experiencing unprecedented levels of theft and violence in their stores,” Kearney advised the Herald.
