No More Handheld Shopping Baskets at the Safeway in Arcata

If you plan on shopping at the Arcata Safeway, be prepared– your only option to transport your groceries around the store will be push carts. 

Hand-held baskets are no longer an option at this store.

Employees say they have stopped offering hand baskets due to an onslaught of shoplifting. Employee management tells redwood news that customers were filling up the handheld shopping baskets with food products and walking out the front door– shoplifting not only the food and the products for sale but taking the basket with them.

Management at the Eureka Safeway says that while they too had all of their hand-held baskets stolen a while back, they have replaced them and are no longer having a problem with theft. The CVS located in the same plaza as the Arcata Safeway, has also discontinued its hand-held basket policy.  No word yet on when, or even if, Safeway will offer baskets again in Arcata.

Management said they would have to do some background research to see if it’s worth it to bring baskets back to the store. Whether the price of replacing the baskets would be enough to overcome the amount that they are losing due to shoplifters using the hand baskets from Safeway.

Social media users are not happy with this change, saying they liked those little baskets, and that they were told to just carry their reusable bag around the store and fill that up as they shopped.