Morrisons stores are telling customers to override ‘Buzz for Booze’ secure alcohol cabinets and simply take what they need to the checkout.
The cabinets have rolled out slowly across the supermarket’s estate since 2023, and are still being installed. The security measure sees spirits and champagne kept behind locked doors. Shoppers have to press a buzzer that alerts a member of staff to come and unlock the doors so they can access the products they want.
However, several Morrisons stores have put up signs on the cabinet doors reading: “The doors are open, just take your bottle and pay at the checkout.”
The supermarket said whether the doors were open or closed varied on a store-by-store basis and the measure was under constant review.
The ‘Buzz for Booze’ cabinets received a raft of social media attention last year as the rollout gathered pace. “Considering you have to wait for everything anyway in that store, adding another wait to an already under-staffed store is a joke,” one wrote on X. A Mumsnet user wrote: “It is annoying, I buzzed, no one came so I had to trail round the store looking for someone.”
Of the new approach taken by stores, GlobalData retail analyst Patrick O’Brien said Morrisons had “sobered up now and opened the doors”.
“It shows the reality of anti-theft measures: what sounds great in principle, stopping thieves getting easy access to high-priced products, cannot be done without causing friction in the purchasing journey,” he told The Grocer.
“So retailers have to weigh up the cost of the measure itself (physical cabinet and installation) and the cost of reduced sales against reduced theft. I wonder how much work was done on the ROI of this one,” he added.
Other supermarkets have been working to reduce theft of alcohol from stores. Earlier this year, Tesco rolled out secure champagne and sparkling wine cabinets to a further 50 stores. The in-aisle locked cabinets are opened by customers via a keypad, with an alarm sounding if the chiller door has been left open for more than seven seconds or propped open. Last year, Sainsbury’s introduced similar cabinets into the booze aisles of some of its stores. Tesco has previously trialled laminated images of alcohol products in place of the actual physical items on shelves.
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