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If you see someone stealing food, no you didn't
I think that principle is intended to apply to staples, when people in poverty are forced to steal food so as not to starve.
Stealing bars of Dairy Milk and then selling them on seems like a different thing.
It's bringing the price of that product back to reasonable market levels and having a knock on effect on the pricing of that product in general.
Whilst I agree it's different from stealing staple foods, it's still something I'd happily turn a blind eye to as it's an unofficial public service
(Yes, yes, I'm leaving)
Sainsbury's profit margins are about 3.8%. Any individual profit might have a larger margin than that, but the maximum downwards pressure on price you can exert overall is that much, which equates to 10p on a £2.75 bar of dairy milk. Is that what you mean by a public service?
3.8% over what time period? If that's still compounding from the 7.2% from last year isn't that still an overall increase for the shareholders?
You make it sound like they're so close to losing money
I'm calculating this from this article linked up the thread, dated April 2025, which says their profits were "just north" of £1 billion on £26.6 billion of revenue.
I'm not an accountant so I dunno if this is the exact right figure - further down the article it says their pre-tax profit was £761 million, which gives you a lower gross margin of 2.9%. I'm sure these different figures just reflect different ways of looking at the same numbers but the point is the same - Sainsbury's is not, overall, gouging people on prices. Surely some products are overpriced, but others are loss leaders.
I suppose I'm trying to tie the disconnect between their costs and their stock value. In my mind, these two metrics would be intimately tied together such that as costs increase, their stock value decreases as they try to keep prices level to compete.
I'm not seeing that trend, it really seems like they're still rewarding their shareholders whilst passing the costs on to the consumer. I simply do not buy their poverty argument
In a rational stock market (and there are numerous reasons why that might not apply) the value of a share reflects the expected future earnings from holding the share. The expected future earnings come in the form of dividends that the company distributes from the profit they make. So if a retailer's costs increase, they put prices up to maintain the exact same profit, and sales do not fall, then you would not expect share price to change, because you would not expect any change to the future earnings from holding a share.
Of course, when prices change, it influences sales. But not always in the same way (because goods can be more or less elastic or - less so at supermarkets - luxury goods) and not always predictably; and since the expectation is about predicting behaviour, that means share price doesn't even necessarily reflect what actually happens.
1 billion is still a lot of profit made on something that we require to live (not chocolate specifically, but food,) even if the margin is low.
And the companies making the products are also profiting.
Looking at total profit instead of profit margin is pretty silly though. My food bill is not affected by how many people shop at the same supermarket as me, even though that increases the total profit of that supermarket. Should I be annoyed that my bill didn't go down in that scenario?
They're selling them to people who can't afford to buy them at the actual stores for full price. Essentially a service where you pay someone to take on the risk of stealing for you, plus a sort of grocery UberEats.
Where there's demand, there's supply, the people who do the supply part looks like learning to code hasn't worked out for them so good, nor has our society in general. People who do the demand part, they're just poor.
There's a vice documentary about this and from the people shown it's pretty clear that they're not going through all the hassle of this because they have such easy lavish lives.
They often get flogged in pubs around where I am, I absolutely have never ever bought Pringles off a guy for £1 a tube rather than the ripoff £3.50 they retail at.
Frankly if you see someone stealing anything from any corporation, no you didn't. Mind your business.
If you see someone shoving six bottles of whisky in their coat, yes you did.
There's a difference between stealing for survival and stealing for profit.
Nah, I didn't see jack, daniels or otherwise. Fuck the corporations.
It doesn't affect them: they've already been paid. It's the shop who takes the loss and the average customer who ends up paying more.
These companies are stealing from people but you draw the line at a poor person stealing from them?
My local shop is stealing from me?
Whether or not I saw something has zero to do with what they're stealing and everything to do with where they're stealing from.
You do not steal from Mom and Pop shops. I ~~will~~ may not say anything to the staff, but I might pay for it or I might direct you to a better place to go steal.
If I see something in Walmart, no I fucking didn't. I don't care what it is.
Edit: based on the reply. It's a good point, but not something I've personally run into so it's not something I've had to consider. I've seen idiot kids doing idiot kid things. I've seen people in need. I've not seen a gang or tweakers stealing from a local shop, only large retailers (no I didn't, I do not give a shit) or individuals (I give many shits about this and my response ranges from stopping them to getting evidence to give to the owners depending on more factors than I can list).
You would watch criminal gangs strip your local shop of high value items to resell for profit, and then offer to pay for it? We're not talking about someone in need stealing essentials here.
You bring up a good point. No, I wouldn't. I phrased it poorly. Imagine I'm having empathy for those in need or redirecting dumb ass kids doing dumb ass kid things.
But honestly criminal gangs aren't generally doing penny ante local shop bullshit. They'll shake them down, but it's just not worth it to steal from local shops when big retailers offer more goods in one place. Unless it's a boutique shop, and I'll be honest, I don't go to those.
Well I'll draw the line at alcohol which I see as a public negative. But chocolate?
Can you honestly tell me that the price increases and volume decreases for it have yielded in a better quality product? Someone has to rebalance that scale if the food regulators wont.
Chocolate has experienced extremely high inflation lately because climate change is causing crop failures in countries where chocolate is grown. So no, it hasn't yielded a better-quality product - it has just been necessary to have chocolate on the shelves at all.
That puts a floor on the price that retailers can sell the product for and have it make sense. If carrying the product at that price results in losses due to theft, there's no point selling it for less, because that will incur greater losses. They might try anti-theft measures, or increasing the price to balance the losses - neither of which benefit people in general. If none of that works, they'll just not sell the product at all.
Shouldn't the retailer soak up some of those costs if their suppliers are unable to deliver? In a rational economy where there would be more competition, surely they would take that financial hit to retain their shoppers whilst offsetting the cost on another product.
They don't seem to be doing that. None of them seem to be doing that, and I'm just not buying that the reason is solely because of climate change
I think supermarkets' low profit margins are reflective of a fairly competitive sector. Do you think Sainsbury's, Tesco, Lidl, Asda and the rest all colluded to increase prices on chocolate products... at a time when, coincidentally, the price of cocoa quadrupled? I don't think there's any evidence of that, and the price increase is adequately explained by other factors.
It's worth saying that the commodity price has now come back down (I only just realised this). So prices should be coming back down as well. But prices are always quite sticky, especially on the way down. There are quite easily explained reasons for that which we can go into if you want.
But to answer your question, "Shouldn’t the retailer soak up some of those costs" the rational thing to do is to absorb costs for as long as that is the most profitable thing to do. But if commodity prices literally go up 4X, the only way you can absorb the cost is to be making a large loss on every bar of chocolate sold. Why would you do that, instead of either a) charging more or b) using the shelf space and distribution costs for something else?
You can lay out a scenario where it's rational for the retailer to keep stocking a loss-making product - to get people in the door and to buy other things which net a greater profit than is lost on the chocolate or whatever. But that's just a scenario, and clearly it's only a question of tweaking some values to come up with a scenario where that loss-leader strategy makes no economic sense. Clearly the supermarkets didn't believe it made economic sense.
This isn't people stealing chocolate because it's expensive, it's people stealing chocolate, cuts of meat, and alcohol etc. to resell. They aren't 'rebalancing' anything, they are organised groups who are stealing in bulk to make a profit. This actually increases prices of those goods for everyone else.
Surely they're reselling at far lower prices than they're listed in stores (otherwise who would buy their stolen goods), which forces then the official price for that product to go down in the area, in order to retain shoppers.
For example, there was a time when my cornershop guy was selling 12 packs of Coke for £3.50. I didn't ask where he got them, but I definitely stopped going to my local Sainsbury's for a while (which is currently selling 4 packs for £4.50).
The thief got a cut, the cornershop guy got a cut, and the savings were passed on to me. The retailer's stockholders lost some minor value.
I fail to see how this is not a rebalancing of prices.
Because the targets of theft then have to invest in more security while making less money, raising prices for customers.
The shop that bought the item legitimately has to pay the full price of the item from the manufacturer / distributor. They have to sell the item at cost + VAT + a percentage to make money
The thief can sell at whatever price they like because they have no costs and don't pay VAT on the sale.
The second shop has to sell the item at the new cost + new VAT + a percentage to make money. They save twice, on the cost of the item and the amount of VAT they pay.
The people who lose from this are:
If the legitimate shop goes out of business then the whole system fails. Your cheap coke is being subsidised by honest customers.
The thieves aren't taking all their warehouse stock and leaving the sales people on their knees tearing their shirts and cursing the sky.
We're talking 1-2% maximum shrinkage from theft. In the 90s where theft was rampant, such losses were part of doing business, they just soaked it up.
I can believe them upping their security somewhat might incur some cost, but not to the degree of price inflation that we're seeing
Most of the price inflation is because of global supply factors, such as war and climate change driving up the cost of wheat and cocoa, for example.
Shop attendants are absolutely affected as the number of violent and abusive confrontations was estimated around 1300 per day in 2024.