Why Does Safeway Suddenly Have Poles On Its Shopping Carts? An Analysis

Attention Safeway shoppers. In the last week or two, you may have noticed an odd phenomenon wherein the shopping carts at some Safeway stores suddenly have a bizarre and inexplicable four-foot pole on the right side of the handle bar. The Broke-Ass discount grocery I-team got on the case, to try to answer  the question of… what’s up with that?

“It’s so people can’t take them out the door,” a Safeway associate told us. The pole is just tall enough so the shopping cart cannot fit through the front exit of the store doors, because it will knock into the top of the door, thereby preventing you from getting the shopping cart out to the parking lot.

Safeway is experiencing a phenomenon of their shopping carts disappearing. While this has always been the case in San Francisco, it has apparently increased in recent months, as Hoodline reported in July that the Church and Market Safeway has seen 160 carts stolen in the previous few weeks.

Safeway generally has pretty decent security, and those viral shoplifting videos are always from other chain stores where the security is far more lax. 

But do not believe Safeway when they cry poor. Their owner Albertsons experienced record sales and earnings growth in their most recent fiscal quarter. And as we noted in our analysis of which companies you should shoplift from, “Safeway’s parent company, Cerberus Capital Management has received $156,378,705 in government subsidies. Amongst their many holdings is the gun manufacturer Remington Arms, who has itself received $68,900,000 in subsidies. So yeah…gross.”