CRESTVIEW — A local supermarket's shopping carts are disappearing, and customers may soon have to help pay to replace them.
The Crestview Pic-N-Sav received 50 new shopping carts five months ago; as of this writing, just 28 remain, according to store manager Andy Harrelson. At $100 each, that’s $2,200 of the store’s revenue.
Pic-N-Sav carts have been found as far away as Old Betheland Aplin Roads, Harrelson said, adding the U.S. Highway 90 West store's cart problem is the worst he’s encountered among the chain's six locations he’s managed.
Harrelson said he doesn’t believe customers maliciously steal the carts. Many Pic-N-Save shoppers come from lower-income neighborhoods near the store, and need a way to get groceries home.
“I understand that some of them don’t have a vehicle,” Harrelson said, adding he has granted permission to customers who ask to take the carts home, provided they bring them back. “I’ve never told a single customer no."
Pic-N-Sav isn’t the shopping center's only store experiencing such thefts. “Our buggies disappear all the time,” said a Dollar General employee who wished to remain anonymous.
Crestview grocers in less residential locations don't seem to have the same issue.
“We don’t have a problem like that at our particular location,” Winn-Dixie manager Ricky Reeves said. The closest neighborhoods to his store, at the corner of Ferdon Boulevard North and Old Bethel Road, are mainly newer, middle-class developments.
Publix, at the corner of Ferdon Boulevard South and Redstone Avenue West, is in a predominantly commercial and medical area. Further, Publix bagboys take many customers’ groceries to their cars and return carts to the store.
Harrelson said his store on Feb. 14 received 100 shopping carts at a cost of $10,000. If more carts disappear, the added overhead may soon show up on price tags.
“Somebody’s got to pay that expense,” he said. “We don’t have a big enough profit margin to keep buying new ones.
"I’ve been fighting real hard to keep our prices down. But when $100 a pop starts hitting me, that one buggy somebody just took, it’s like they walked in and took $100 worth of groceries and walked out with it.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Shopping cart thefts could force Crestview supermarket to raise prices (VIDEO)