How would this work? The items have price tags on shelves. You can't arbitrarily jack up prices without attracting consumer outrage and/or regulatory scrutiny.
>perhaps they’re charging a percentage of the items that go through their machines
That wouldn't affect the raw sales data, which is how "shrink" is determined (ie. goods you've bought - goods you've sold)
>It’s never theft
What makes you so sure of this? Theft is a real phenomenon, so it's at least somewhat plausible that it's affecting stuff. You'd have to have pretty good exculpatory evidence to assert it's "never theft".
>specifically it ends up being something like “our stores are costing because of downtown theft” then you find out it’s because downtown stores are doing half the business as before the pandemic and it was never theft.
Source?