I don't know why you got downvoted for this. It's your experience, and it's related to the content of the article.

I managed a grocery store for 6 years, and we had a very large homeless population nearby. They might steal little bits sometimes, but they mostly bought stuff with their EBT cards because they didn't want to risk losing access to a bathroom and a place they weren't kicked out of.

The people who were really problematic were actually what I had to assume were reselling the food to local restaurants. In my case, they were almost exclusively Philipino, but they would try to steal like $600 worth of steaks, frozen shrimp, ribs, scallops, and chicken. These guys had resources, and if I didn't catch them building the cart, they would hit my store 3 times a week. We knew they were also going into the other stores in the area multiple times a week (we shared footage).

Of those dozens of times, there were only a couple that resulted in a police report. The cops won't come if you have no one there for them to talk to. The only time cops came quickly is when I let them know one of the guys who threatened me with a chefs knife was back in the store.

I personally ordered over 800 shopping carts for this store over the years as well because they were all stolen and the property managers wouldn't let us install cart locks because it would mean blocking part of the parking lot entrance for a night or 2 supposedly.

The location was still profitable, but it was getting less and less so as I couldn't keep carts (always on backorder from the supplier) and people could only shop with hand baskets.