Jumbo has had enough of all the theft: comes at the expense of price reductions
A huge amount is stolen from Jumbo supermarkets, and they are (logically) thoroughly fed up with it. Their plan, therefore, is to tackle theft significantly in the coming year; in many stores, theft amounts to around one percent of total turnover, which may not sound like much — but is genuinely insane.
Because that means more than 100 million euros’ worth is stolen every year, Jumbo reported today.
Jumbo: testing new methods
In the coming period, Jumbo will focus more on increased camera surveillance and take even more visible and invisible measures to reduce theft. And reducing that theft could also work out very favorably for us as supermarket customers: according to CEO Ton van Veen, it could even mean that product prices can be lowered further.
That is not possible yet, simply because the costs of all the theft (once again: 100!! million euros) do not allow it. Very logical, then, although Jumbo is promising to implement more price reductions next year.
Products at Jumbo will also become cheaper in 2024
After all, in 2023 the supermarket chain already made thousands of products cheaper, and today they indicated that they would continue along that path this year. They even promise to remain very reluctant to raise prices, even if that were to come at the expense of their own profits. Their profits are actually doing quite well, by the way: they are the Netherlands’ largest supermarket after Albert Heijn and generated 7.3 percent more turnover last year than the year before.
Last year’s total turnover was 11.02 billion euros, which was also the first time Jumbo exceeded 10 billion euros in annual turnover. Jumbo is therefore still growing incredibly fast and has great plans for this year; I also think reducing those thefts is a very good plan, which will hopefully work well.
Greedflation
Still, customers’ reactions are far from mild. People say that the supermarket is also stealing from their wallets. Here are some of the comments on Instagram:
‘I’m not saying it’s okay, but groceries really are expensive and they make millions in profit. And if you only have 30 euros a week for food etc., I can understand it.’
‘Jumbo shouldn’t have made everything so fucking expensive. It used to be a good store with good prices. Now everything is more expensive than at AH.’
‘Don’t make the groceries expensive, Jumbo. You don’t need to sponsor Max Verstappen and other sports for millions, so stop stealing from customers and then people won’t steal from the store anymore either!!’
‘1% — and people can’t afford groceries. Where is the problem?’
‘Cause: greedflation 💰’.
Another frequently heard complaint: that there are far fewer cashiers:
‘Maybe hire people to scan the groceries instead of making people do it themselves.’
‘Maybe put people behind the registers, and lower your profit margin a notch.’
‘Cashiers should be kept and no self-checkouts! Taking people’s jobs away and now complaining??? Staff don’t cost 100 million, so they would still have money left over. Conclusion: get rid of self-checkouts, bring back staff (train them properly).’
(Direct quotes from Instagram)
Also read:
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Image: Jumbo, source: Nu.nl/Instagram
