The chocolate aisle of the Cambridgeshire supermarket looks more like a high-security prison than somewhere you’d go to buy a sweet treat.
Bars of Dairy Milk worth £1.75 and After Eights costing £3.50 are encased in Perspex security boxes.
To access the KitKats, you have to slide a plastic screen across the shelf and squeeze your hand through the gap.
Boxes of Milk Tray (worth £4.50) are tagged with yellow metallic stickers, designed to trigger the alarms unless they’re removed at checkout.
In this small branch of Tesco, just outside Cambridge city centre, these elaborate security measures might seem like overkill, especially on low-cost items such as chocolate.
But this is not an isolated case.
In some inner-city locations, confectionery shelves are fitted with plastic surrounds and a button to alert staff who hold a key – a throwback to the sort of counter service that pre-dated modern supermarkets.
Shop owners insist it’s necessary, a new and troubling development in a shoplifting epidemic that’s sweeping the nation – and wreaking financial havoc.
A chocolate thief in the West Midlands raids shelves
According to the Association of Convenience Stores, confectionery is the second-most targeted product stolen from retailers (topped only by alcohol).
Reports of chocolate shoplifting in the past 12 months abound: £134,000 of Kinder Buenos stolen in Lancashire; 200,000 Cadbury’s Crème Eggs taken in Telford; thousands of boxes of Ferrero Rocher found stashed in a vehicle in Essex.
Wiltshire Police shared a video of a man dragging an entire shelf of chocolate out of a shop in December; West Midlands Police recently jailed a thief who swiped trays of chocolate into his rucksack and smashed a window to escape.
And this is far more than opportunistic thieves indulging their sweet tooth.
Investigations by the Daily Mail have revealed links between chocolate shoplifting and organised criminal gangs operating both across Britain and in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania, who make huge profits from paying street criminals to steal it to order.
‘We need to bust the myth that this is just schoolkids nicking a bar of Dairy Milk,’ says Emmeline Taylor, professor of criminology at City St George’s, University of London.
‘It’s not, it’s in bulk, and there’s a quasi-organised set-up behind it which is part of something much darker and more exploitative.’
A police source in Romania confirmed that the country’s general inspectorate was working closely with British officers in an operation to trace the thieves across borders.
Some chocolate products, like those pictured in a Cambridge Co-Op, are kept in security boxing
So why chocolate?
First, prices have risen.
‘Cocoa prices have risen 15 per cent in the last year, making it something that is attractive to criminals looking to sell on at a lower price,’ says Chris Noice of the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), which represents 50,000 shops.
Certainly, with some household brands rising by between 50p and 80p per bar, the margins for resale are much higher, especially if you haven’t paid for it in the first place.
Second, the products are easy to steal, especially in the run-up to Easter when there’s more chocolate in the shops than usual.
‘No-one’s ever thought about chocolate as being a vulnerable target before, which makes it perfect fodder for shoplifters,’ says Jason Roach, professor of crime and policing at the University of Huddersfield.
‘It’s concealable, it’s easily removable, and it probably won’t be missed immediately.’
When chocolate started disappearing from the shelves at Sunita Aggarwal’s convenience stores in Leicester and Sheffield, her staff didn’t notice at first.
‘After a while we realised shoplifters were walking out with full cases of chocolate,’ she says.
‘With the increase in price, one of those cases could be worth £40 to £50 – so it started to have a major impact on my business.’
To combat the problem, she installed CCTV cameras, and her team now only half fills confectionery shelves to limit losses.
They have also moved the chocolate closer to the till – so it’s more visible to staff.
While some shopkeepers recognise shoplifters because they are repeat offenders, others report being targeted by unknowns who move across the country employing the same methods.
These, says Prof Taylor, are what’s known as ‘poly criminals’.
Sunita Aggarwal said she had reduced the amount of chocolate on display in her Sheffield shop because of the increased threat of theft
‘They just do whatever is most profitable and lowest risk at any given time,’ she says.
And this is where organised crime enters the picture – it drives a quarter of all shoplifting incidents, according to statistics.
Much like a legitimate business, there are various levels of seniority within such groups.
At the bottom are the shoplifters themselves, often vulnerable individuals who need cash quickly on a day-to-day basis.
‘The majority are prolific offenders, many of them addicted to drugs or alcohol,’ says private security boss David McKelvey.
‘They have handlers in place, who give them the equivalent of a ‘shopping list’ of items they want them to steal.
‘They go in, usually with a rucksack or a trolley, and they start filling it up, brazen as anything.
‘Their handlers know where to sell the stolen goods on without detection. Chocolate is ideal because it’s always in demand and it isn’t going to go out of date.’
Some chocolate bars are being kept in plastic cases after warnings from police about the threat from thieves
Although much of the resale of stolen confectionery takes place in the UK, there is, he adds, an international element: ‘The stuff leaves the country in vans and shipping containers and it’s untraceable once it’s abroad.’
According to a source in the Romanian ministry of internal affairs, several nationals have been arrested in the UK for shoplifting – and deported back to their home country.
Not only does criminal gang involvement make it more difficult to bring shoplifters to justice, it also makes it harder for retailers to confront the thieves.
‘We know that challenging thieves is the number one trigger for abuse in store,’ says Mr Noice.
‘Challenging organised criminals could lead to very serious incidents of abuse and violence.’
Instead, shop owners are turning to ever-more rigorous security measures.
A Tesco worker in Cambridge said plastic sliders had been in place for six months – but were doing nothing to deter shoplifting.
Another, in a Co-op branch, said they started keeping chocolate in security boxes in 2024, but removed them as it was ‘affecting business’.
Shoplifting increased almost immediately.
Cocoa prices have risen 15% in the last year, making supermarket chocolate like the bars pictured attractive for thieves to steal and resell at a lower price
Other retailers are resorting to more sophisticated security, including cutting-edge technology called FaceWatch, which scans faces in real time and creates a biometric imprint which it uses to scan a database of offenders.
If there’s a match, an alert is sent to staff members’ mobile devices, as well as triggering a loud audio signal, designed to encourage potential shoplifters to leave the store.
Frustratingly, retailers say that when their security systems do catch shoplifters swiping chocolate, little is done to bring them to justice.
Of the police forces we contacted, most didn’t reply or had no comment to make on the issue.
Only Cambridgeshire Constabulary responded to say they were ‘working closely with retailers’ to apprehend those responsible.
Mr McKelvey says the onus for the lack of action rests on shop owners, adding: ‘Police officers are turning up, catching the shoplifter – and then the retailer says they don’t want to press charges, they just want their goods back. After a while, the police are going to ask, ‘What’s the point in turning up?’
‘Retailers can put all the security tags they want on their chocolate, but if the criminals know there aren’t any consequences, they’ll keep on helping themselves.’
