It was nice to have grown up in a high-trust society where shops like Greggs could operate. Unfortunately, that era has now come to an end with the number of thefts recorded by retailers in the UK experiencing a 3.7 million rise to 20.4 million in the last year alone, according to the British Retail Consortium.

As such, Greggs has announced it will be moving its self-serve food and drinks to behind the counter to help curb shoplifting.

The high street bakery is trialing the measure at a handful of London stores including Whitechapel, Peckham and Ilford, which, it said, are “exposed to higher levels of anti-social behaviour”. A few examples of which can be seen below, with people just casually walking in and helping themselves to food and drink without having to worry about anyone stopping them:

This is the reason why Greggs have put up prices or a thieving tax as others are calling it pic.twitter.com/LrEXa9UIUQ

— Milky (@jon68806333) May 20, 2025

Man robbed everything from the Greggs on Deptford high street pic.twitter.com/KwVd7gCaKk

— London & UK Street News (@CrimeLdn) July 17, 2024

🚨🎥GREGGS RAIDED ON LIVESTREAM

– Britain is becoming a lawless backwater
– Soon we will start seeing stores close down

How do we stop this? pic.twitter.com/DODbL4UMhN

— Basil the Great (@Basil_TGMD) April 28, 2025

Greggs has 2,600 bakeries around the UK, so I doubt it would come to a point where they implement this measure across every store. Then again, who knows? Especially with the way the statistics are looking when it comes to shoplifting.

Of course, it’s not as simple as just attributing the rise in shoplifting to people being c*nts, as things only started to get particularly bad after COVID and the ridiculous rise in household bills and the price of food. Is it any wonder why some people have to resort to stealing from places like Greggs to survive?

Well either way, it’s a sorry state of affairs. Security tags on Red Bull cans? Deodorant behind locked glass? Greggs food and drink behind the counter? Might not be long before most places adopt the Screwfix model: you walk to the till, order what you want and the shop staff will go to the shelves to pick it up. Might be the only way for a lot of these businesses to survive before too long.

To meet the man who ordered the biggest bacon butty ever from Greggs, click HERE. I hope he paid for that…