Grocery store cigarette sales

[veteran+]

My first promotion above bagboy was stocker and order clerk for front end merchandise, including cigarettes (I was 15yrs old, LOL).

It was not labor intensive (even without computers). Side note: We also had those cigarette machines. Proper ordering and rotation routines made it a breeze to manage. I never had expired product to worry about. Side note: exotic merch received credit returns from vendors at the time.

When I got promoted to Front End Manager, I even expanded our tobacco offerings (imported and exotic brands).

Eeezy Peezy!

The market has changed. As tobacco values per pack increased and sales volumes kept declining, theft became a bigger problem and more noticeable. The amount of internal theft on tobacco I dealt with was stunning and quite stupid. I'm taking excellent quality 20-25 year tenure employees stealing tobacco into their shoes or pants type stuff. Get so close to the case no way a camera can see them and the brand they smoked just so happened to be stocked on a bottom shelf conveniently.

The problem I kept having was with the adjustments from carton to single packs. Multiple retailers. All received by the carton, and we sold cartons. But to rip open cartons and adjust out the cartons and adjust in the single packs was always a problem. Labor intensive and mistakes often made. Then there was the issue of no singles left so random cashiers without access to the inventory adjustment equipment would rip open cartons and grab a few single packs out, etc. Directing them to leave empty cartons so the employees who knew the process worked to an extent. If employees are trained properly, the inventory side of this isn't an issue...

If I had a store and could avoid selling tobacco, I would avoid selling tobacco. But many stores customers demand this product be sold especially in rural areas.

Of course the market has changed. Stealing cigarettes has not changed.

The issues you mentioned regarding stocking, etc. are very strange. Even in my recent experiences at Ralphs and Vons does not support what you had to deal with.

Also, cigarettes are always received and ordered by the carton so you always have to get your single packs from those cartons. There should never be an inventory issue.

[storewanderer]

Of course the market has changed. Stealing cigarettes has not changed.

The issues you mentioned regarding stocking, etc. are very strange. Even in my recent experiences at Ralphs and Vons does not support what you had to deal with.

Also, cigarettes are always received and ordered by the carton so you always have to get your single packs from those cartons. There should never be an inventory issue.

I suspect you had better employees and probably one person assigned to handling the tobacco... the more people involved the more problems there are.

The theft is a big problem. There are convenience stores that count all loose packs at every shift change due to the theft... (and cartons are locked and only the store manager can access them).

The inventory issue comes because someone had to physically adjust on hands for cartons vs. packs.

For instance:

Receive 12 cartons of Marlboro Reds. Usual receiving process.
Pile 12 cartons into the locked case where cases go up front.
Cartons sit there.

So then when it is time to restock cigarettes we would get an inventory gun and do an on hand adjustment where we adjusted "out" the cartons and adjusted "in" the single packs. This process is where errors kept occurring. Sloppiness. Confusion on the shorts vs. 100s, lights vs. ultra lights, etc.

For a while we encountered a situation where someone(s) was(were) going into the locked case of cartons, taking out 2-3 packs, then putting them back into the locked case and taping them shut (had some double sided tape there). So then the employees would go grab cartons to stock cigarettes, do the on hand adjustment cartons to singles before actually opening up the cartons (had to change that process... for multiple reasons) rip the cartons open, and weeks went by before they noticed some of the cartons weren't full...

[veteran+]

Oh well.....................never had those issues and never had to do inventory adjustments between loose and carton (the computer did that).

[ClownLoach]

Oh well.....................never had those issues and never had to do inventory adjustments between loose and carton (the computer did that).

Sounds like the employees at that chain figured out how to steal, so the chain set up that manual process to track the inner packs versus the cartons.

[storewanderer]

Oh well.....................never had those issues and never had to do inventory adjustments between loose and carton (the computer did that).

This was my question. We can receive pallets of boxes of boxes and cans all day and break those open and stock them no problem. Why was it different with cigarettes? I never got a clear answer other than "because we sell them as both cartons and as singles under different UPCs" but "that other stuff we only sell as singles."

So why then do we sell as cartons? Why not just do a quantity discount if someone buys the quantity of a carton and scan the pack times quantity? Oh because there is no quantity key that got taken away for everything but produce... okay, maybe enable it again on tobacco too? Nope. Sometimes you can't win.

[ClownLoach]

Oh well.....................never had those issues and never had to do inventory adjustments between loose and carton (the computer did that).

This was my question. We can receive pallets of boxes of boxes and cans all day and break those open and stock them no problem. Why was it different with cigarettes? I never got a clear answer other than "because we sell them as both cartons and as singles under different UPCs" but "that other stuff we only sell as singles."

So why then do we sell as cartons? Why not just do a quantity discount if someone buys the quantity of a carton and scan the pack times quantity? Oh because there is no quantity key that got taken away for everything but produce... okay, maybe enable it again on tobacco too? Nope. Sometimes you can't win.

This screams overzealous loss prevention. They don't have to do the work so they're always happy to add time consuming procedures to try to keep everyone in line, like zeroing out cartons and adding on hands for packs here. It has to be to create an audit trail and document additional counts. On Monday night at closing we had 60 packs of Marlboros per the count change, it's Wednesday morning and we are missing six packs, either Jack or Susie stole them yesterday because they were the only ones that worked the desk. And last week we were missing a few packs and Jack worked the day they disappeared. Let's go interrogate Jack, he's obviously stealing them. All those extra changes create documented windows that make it easier to figure out who is stealing.

[storewanderer]

This screams overzealous loss prevention. They don't have to do the work so they're always happy to add time consuming procedures to try to keep everyone in line, like zeroing out cartons and adding on hands for packs here. It has to be to create an audit trail and document additional counts. On Monday night at closing we had 60 packs of Marlboros per the count change, it's Wednesday morning and we are missing six packs, either Jack or Susie stole them yesterday because they were the only ones that worked the desk. And last week we were missing a few packs and Jack worked the day they disappeared. Let's go interrogate Jack, he's obviously stealing them. All those extra changes create documented windows that make it easier to figure out who is stealing.

It was store management in conjunction with loss prevention.

Eventually the cigarette cases got moved to a more visible location that was out in the open (they were still locked). We were also given permission to discontinue a huge number of slow moving SKUs which made the cases easier to maintain. The inventory adjustment issue was still an issue but these changes did help quite a bit. There was also some employee turnover, and some who may have been stealing tobacco moved on.

One of the easiest ways to know who is stealing is when someone smokes an obscure brand that hardly any actual customers buy, and that brand has count issues... the problem is when that is store management or loss prevention... so they never really wanted to explicitly blame any hourly employees. It was just a constant "what are we going to do about this" and focus on the theft of the common SKUs. On the slower moving SKUs it was always "maybe those spoiled and we didn't zero them out but if it was a spoilage anyway it doesn't matter." Actually it did matter we could get credit for spoiled... but they weren't very interested in credit on spoiled.

[Brian Lutz]

That Costco business center had it all locked with both some kind of key fob or key card reader as well as a padlock. There are two full conveyor belt checkout stands inside the cage. I would imagine that they would tell a potential customer to do all their other purchases before meeting at the front for tobacco, then an employee basically escorts them into that room and then rings up the tobacco transaction so nothing leaves the room unpaid. Seems like the shrink from the category warrants a lot of security expense which probably isn't worth it even for a business center like that store. Again nobody was in there the entire time I shopped and the store was busy that morning.

If I recall correctly, the Sam's Club store in Renton kept all their tobacco products in the "cage" at the front of the store next to the HBA section along with things like high-value electronics. I believe there was a walk-up window at the front for making purchases from there. Looking at images on Google maps I see photos from 2017 showing a similar setup at the one here in Greensboro, but as far as I can tell the store no longer sells tobacco.

I haven't been to a Costco Business Center before but recall that when regular Costco stores sold tobacco they kept all the products in a fenced off area to the side of the checkstands near the pharmacy, and I believe any purchases made from there would need to be rung up from a register in the cage.

[cjd]

I remember years ago Food Lion had large plastic cigarette cases at the front wall of the store. I guess this way cigarette purchases could be made from any register. Anyway, I’ve never seen that at any store, but I would think it also discouraged theft with the case being out in the open. These were huge cases as well, bigger than anything I’ve seen at other stores.

[arizonaguy]

That Costco business center had it all locked with both some kind of key fob or key card reader as well as a padlock. There are two full conveyor belt checkout stands inside the cage. I would imagine that they would tell a potential customer to do all their other purchases before meeting at the front for tobacco, then an employee basically escorts them into that room and then rings up the tobacco transaction so nothing leaves the room unpaid. Seems like the shrink from the category warrants a lot of security expense which probably isn't worth it even for a business center like that store. Again nobody was in there the entire time I shopped and the store was busy that morning.

If I recall correctly, the Sam's Club store in Renton kept all their tobacco products in the "cage" at the front of the store next to the HBA section along with things like high-value electronics. I believe there was a walk-up window at the front for making purchases from there. Looking at images on Google maps I see photos from 2017 showing a similar setup at the one here in Greensboro, but as far as I can tell the store no longer sells tobacco.

I haven't been to a Costco Business Center before but recall that when regular Costco stores sold tobacco they kept all the products in a fenced off area to the side of the checkstands near the pharmacy, and I believe any purchases made from there would need to be rung up from a register in the cage.

The Costco Business Center in Phoenix has it locked in a caged area but tobacco sales are limited to resale customers with a valid license.