“FFS STOP RINGING THE DAMN BELL AND JUST TAKE IT.” OK, so I’m paraphrasing slightly, but that’s pretty much the revised instructions for customers using Morrisons ‘Buzz for Booze’ secure cabinets, at least in many of the stores they’ve been installed in.

The cabinets are supposed to work like this: expensive drink is kept behind locked glass doors, customers push a button, member of staff is alerted via headset, cabinet is unlocked, the customer takes what they want.

While a reasonable enough solution on paper, in the reality of the stretched-staff shop floor, it appears the labour-intensive concept has fallen out of favour. Rolled out since 2023 – with new ones still being installed – store managers have taken to leaving the doors unlocked and putting up signage that clearly indicates customers can serve themselves.

As one LinkedIn commenter noted: “Will almost guarantee these were put in by head office, while no extra hours put in to service them.”

“They don’t have the staff to maintain it. And anybody who works in the shop floor knew this,” said another.

The supermarket said whether the doors were open or closed varied on a store-by-store basis and the measure was under constant review.

Anti-theft, added friction

Morrisons is not alone in introducing anti-theft measures that put product behind lock and key, or cage them in plastic (see Tesco’s secure champagne chillers, or its steak in security boxes, or Sainsbury’s cardboard cutouts, or Iceland’s steak dispenser). But they are all clunky and add friction to the shopper experience – you can forget comparing labels or reading the tasting notes, for a start. And they look terrible.

Retail consultant Mark Field believes it’s gone so far that some brands have become “unrecognisable on shelf from others”.

Retailers don’t want to be doing this, of course, as such measures undoubtedly hurt sales. A US study by Numerator found while 62% of shoppers say they typically wait for store assistants so they can buy a captive item, 17% said they would make the purchase at a different retailer instead, while 10% said they would abandon the purchase altogether. 

Asked how often they abandon a purchase due to it being locked up, 39% said they sometimes did, 17% often did and 9% did so almost every time.

But there are some tricky sums to calculate. First is working out whether the losses due to theft are greater or smaller than the sales lost due to product being locked up. Then there’s the gnarlier problem of figuring out the value of sales lost due to a shopper picking an alternative store whenever they are in a rush, or completely. And what cost can be put on appearing to be a soft target to thieves?

The last resort

The cabinets are more ubiquitous stateside, particularly in drugstores.

“Can’t help wonder why British stores haven’t learn from the utter failure of these cabinets in the US,” a source told The Grocer. “Shopping [pharmacy chain] CVS is horrendous, almost everything is behind lock and key. CVS is actively user-hostile and I always wonder what they think they are achieving.”

In January, CVS admitted “keeping products locked up can be inconvenient” for customers, telling The New York Times it was “a measure of last resort”. Earlier this year, the chief executive of Walgreens Boots Alliance Tim Wentworth told investors the security measure “does impact how sales work through the store because when you lock things up… you don’t sell as many of them”.

There is no easy answer. The Grocer’s article about Morrisons’ booze cabinets gained a range of viewpoints when posted on LinkedIn.

“If we don’t start hurting thieves as much as they hurt every honest person then it’ll never stop.” “Problem is there are zero consequences for the criminals.” “Looks like good intentions tripping over poor implementation.” “Security should protect sales, not slow them down.” “Time for UK retailers to experiment with dedicated areas, customers pay for alcohol when leaving the area. The off-licence within store concept.” (Add your own take here.)

With incidents of shop theft in England and Wales having reached record levels according to new ONS data, solutions are urgently needed. But it seems buzzing for booze, at least in its current form, isn’t one of them.

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