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Comment by sn0w_crash | Hacker News Reader

Then remove the plastic cases protecting all of the aisle items in the store.

At this point it would be better if they moved back to pre-self-service stores, and have the product behind a counter, and store clerks that will get you what you ask. As things are now, it’s the worse of both worlds: you still need a clerk to get the product, but instead of once, you need to buzz and wait once per aisle. A byproduct of this is that the smash and grabs would decrease, as there is no direct access to the product.

Or to put it differently, maybe the format of stores where the product is all available and you can walk out freely was chosen because it decreased costs, even accounting for lossage. Now that lossage has increased, they should rethink the format.

Making employees manually fetch products is not a solution. That's way too labor intensive, and there's no excuse to make people waste their time doing menial labor like that in today's world.

I like what Amazon has in their Fresh stores, where you use a credit card to enter and an automated system tracks what you take and sends you the bill.

My argument is not wether this was optimal by any metric; my argument is that they are already having employers go around the store opening cabinets, many times multiple times for the same customer. That incurs in the same menial work as having everything behind the counter, and is also a worse experience (at least for me).

Can’t comment on the Amazon Fresh approach. Not sure if the costs are lower, for example. It could be that they are operating at a huge loss already.

That is the new model. You order on the app and pick up your items or have them delivered.

The other day I visited a target and half the merchandise was behind plastic walls. I walked right back out and they lost a few hundred dollars in sales, but the pick-up/delivery employees have their own keys to those plastic doors.

Eventually every store will just be an Amazon warehouse. The economic pressure (and by extension, ecological pressure) is simply in that direction.

Or, the threat was overstated because the product was protected. Don’t hold your breath for a trend reversal in SF.

Until the plastic results in loss of sales because people don’t want to bother, we probably won’t see it reversed. The cost is sunk. Why wouldn’t they leave it, even if ineffective, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything?

Stores have thought of this, and know the effects already. Apparently putting products behind glass causes almost a 50% drop in sales( because people don’t want to bother), so stores would prefer not to put anything behind glass or a counter, but they do because the alternative is 100% loss from theft.

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