Walmart makes drastic change amid alarming customer trend

The retailer is adapting to a concerning new change.

Jun 24, 2025 - 13:20

Walmart makes drastic change amid alarming customer trend

It doesn't really matter if you're the biggest retail chain in the nation or just a small local business. Most retailers would agree that it's tough to run a store right now.

To be sure, the retail business has always been a difficult one. Being customer-facing can be rewarding and incredibly taxing at the same time.

That's partly because shopping behaviors change rapidly. And when they do change, customers expect retailers to adapt instantly.

Take, for example, the past five or so years. The onset of Covid forced many of us to change how we shop for everything from tea to toilet paper.

Instead of making a weekly run to the nearby supermarket, many shoppers preferred instead to order their goods online and either pick them up in stores or get them delivered.

Few supermarkets were ready for this jolting change, though. They had to rapidly adapt to a shift in consumer preference.

Some were able to scale up the change quickly; new parking spaces were allotted for mobile customers, and now many grocery stores offer designated areas for easy pick-up.

But it took a while to get there, and those that didn't adapt quickly enough risked getting left behind.

The Covid pandemic permanently changed how we shop.
Image source: Getty Images

Retailers must adapt quickly

It seems like everywhere you look, change is upon us. At least that's the case in the brick-and-mortar retail space.

While few of us still think about the pandemic on a daily basis (most of us have long since ditched the masks and social distancing), many have changed the way we shop forever. That's partly by choice, and partly by necessity.

For instance, at the height of Covid, many retail chains suffered from extreme employee attrition. Suddenly, very few employees wanted to work at in-person stores and pull long, hard hours while dealing with an increasingly demanding or unruly public.

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Shrink levels spiked during the pandemic, and organized retail crime forced some retailers to rethink their business model altogether. Some high-profile retailers like Dick's and Target even warned that shrink had risen to untenable levels and was cutting drastically into profits.

This was suddenly at odds with the self-checkout model, which many big-box stores relied on to assist with busy queues and keep purchases flowing.

But self-checkout largely relies on customer honesty, and accidental or purposeful theft can happen regularly.

Walmart makes a big change

The challenges with self-checkout led some stores to institute stricter self-checkout policies. Target, for instance, began limiting the number of items customers could purchase at a self-checkout kiosk.

And now, a Walmart (WMT) Supercenter in Shrewsbury, Mo., has completely eliminated its self-checkout option.

The Walmart said it removed its self-checkout option in April 2024.

Prior to its removal, the Shrewsbury Police Department said about 25% of its theft calls had come from Walmart between January and May 2024.

Shrewsbury Police Chief Lisa Vargas said the biggest issue was people bagging up items and leaving without paying for them. Once Walmart removed the self-checkout kiosks, however, theft calls dramatically declined.

During January to May 2025, theft calls to the police dropped to 11% overall, a more than 50% reduction. Arrests were down, too.

"Custodial arrests, in which suspects are detained and booked, also were down, Vargas continued, with her department making 160 arrests from January through May 2024, 108 of which were at Walmart. In the same period this year, Shrewsbury police made just 55 arrests, 49 of which were at Walmart," Webster Kirkwood Times reported.

A Walmart spokesperson said that Walmart is always looking for ways to improve its shopping experience, though it doesn't currently have plans to roll out this policy nationwide.