I used Tesco’s new locked liquor cabinets… and I don’t understand how they will prevent theft

It’s no secret that Britain is in the midst of a wave of shoplifting-related crime.

In short, there has been a huge increase in thieves simply walking into stores, large and small, and walking out with their arms full of stuff, without much fear of being caught.

Most Friday nights my boyfriend and I buy a bottle of wine from the local Tesco Express to accompany dinner.

If I’m feeling fancy, I might treat myself to a bottle of Prosecco.

It’s a quick, painless task that I don’t think about much.

That was until I saw that Tesco had recently launched locked display cabinets for selling alcohol to deter shoplifters.

The idea is that drinks can be locked before the door is unlocked remotely, without waiting for a Tesco employee to come and unlock them.

A store in Perivale, west London, has gone semi-viral on social media for its cabinets.

TikTok users are baffled, Twitter users are outraged: many believe it is a sad critique of the times we live in.

I decided to go to the store myself to see the cabinets in person.

A stone’s throw from Perivale station, this Tesco superstore is sandwiched between a Costa Coffee and the Grade II listed Hoover Building.

It’s a quiet, typical London suburb, and not a place where you’d expect an epidemic of shoplifting.

The store is huge and offers your standard food and drink offering, plus your clothing range and a pharmacy.

I maneuver between refrigerators and aisles filled with bottles and cans of alcohol, some without safety labels, in open refrigerators.

I wonder if the liquor cabinets have already been removed due to the backlash, but I eventually find them at the back of the store.

It is understandable that Tesco has decided, for now, to place only certain sparkling wines, champagnes and spirits behind these display cases.

I speak to a Tesco employee who says the cabinet replaced a faulty one and was installed about six months ago.

They say shoplifters are the order of the day and the problem isn’t just alcohol, but also food, drink and even electric toothbrushes – and lockers don’t seem to make much of a difference.

I’m trying to open a refrigerator with an electronic locking system myself. It’s pretty simple: they’re locked until I press a button on a screen, wait 10 seconds until they open and I can choose the bottle I want.

I do not need to present my Clubcard or any identification document.

Tesco says it is trialling a new cabinet in a small number of large stores to help reduce theft, but I’m not convinced.

The employee I spoke to seemed to think it would help deal with serial thieves, but Tesco claims no cameras or facial recognition software are used.

This is surprising, considering that many supermarkets and retailers now film us at self-service checkouts, for example.

So the question arises: what exactly is the point?

If the door opens automatically after a few seconds, what’s to stop customers from taking a bottle and leaving?

Similarly, although the hallway is empty on a Wednesday afternoon, I imagine it will be much busier on a Friday or Saturday night.

Once the door is open, a thief could lean over and remove a bottle.

If someone is desperate enough, they will find a way.

Similarly, this store displays plenty of wine and beer, which is not hidden behind a screen and door that thieves could easily take.

My local Tesco Express in East London has moved some of its most popular and high-value bottles into a small display case behind the tobacco counter, in the same way supermarkets used to store their spirits behind the counter.

This makes a lot more sense. Customers are forced to ask a member of staff to collect a bottle for them and can watch them put it through the machine at the self-service checkouts.

The new liquor cabinets, however, mean a broader move away from customer-facing jobs in stores (the Tesco employee I speak to is replenishing shelves), as epitomised by the rollout of self-checkout machines.

If the theft of spirits and sparkling wines is such a big problem, why aren’t they behind a counter that only employees can access, instead of waiting at an automatic door?

I congratulate Tesco for doing something about the spate of shoplifting, even at the cost of causing minor inconvenience to regular shoppers.

A survey by the British Retail Consortium earlier this year showed the cost of theft had doubled to £1.8bn in 2022/23, with more than 45,000 incidents a day.

Supermarkets are losing a lot of money due to theft and will probably have to spend more to prevent it.

Tesco declined to say how much the cabinets would cost to install or how many stores might have them in future.

But if you’re serious about it, you’ll need to install much more than just an automatic door.

Have you seen any new methods to tackle the problem of shoplifting in a shop near you? Get in touch with us: editor@thisismoney.co.uk