The guard at Wolfchase Galleria on a Saturday afternoon doesn’t sit. He stands near the food court entrance, feet planted wide, eyes scanning the crowd moving past Foot Locker and toward Dillard’s. He’s one of at least eight uniformed officers I counted during a visit last weekend. Two were posted near the anchor stores, one circling the parking garage on foot, and the rest rotating through the interior corridors on a pattern I couldn’t predict. That last part is intentional.
Three years ago, this kind of visible security presence at Memphis’s largest indoor mall would have felt unusual. In March 2022, it feels like the minimum.
Retail theft has become one of the most talked-about problems in American commerce. The National Retail Federation’s 2022 National Retail Security Survey put the total cost of retail shrinkage at $94.5 billion for 2021, up from $90.8 billion the year before. External theft (shoplifting, organized retail crime, smash-and-grabs) made up roughly $35 billion of that figure. The rest came from employee theft, administrative errors, and other internal losses. Either way, the number is staggering. And it’s growing.
Memphis retailers feel it. Talk to any store manager along Germantown Parkway or in the Poplar Avenue corridor, and they’ll tell you the same thing: theft is getting bolder, more organized, and harder to stop. A manager at a national clothing chain near Oak Court Mall told me his store lost more merchandise in the last quarter of 2021 than in any quarter he could remember. “We’ve added cameras, we’ve added staff, and we’re still bleeding,” he said.
Wolfchase, Oak Court, Southland: Different Malls, Same Problem
Simon Property Group, which owns Wolfchase Galleria off I-40 and Germantown Parkway, has increased its security budget at the property over the past two years. That means more guards, longer shifts, and more coordination with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. Wolfchase has about 120 stores and draws shoppers from across the metro area, making it a high-traffic target for organized theft rings that hit multiple stores in a single trip.
Oak Court Mall on Poplar Avenue in East Memphis has taken similar steps. The mall, which anchors the upscale Poplar-Perkins intersection, added uniformed guards to its parking areas in late 2021 after a string of vehicle break-ins. Inside, security officers now carry radios tuned to a shared channel with store loss prevention teams, allowing faster response when a theft is spotted.
Over in Whitehaven, Southland Mall has faced different challenges. The property has dealt with crime concerns for years, and management brought in additional contract security in 2021 to supplement the existing team. A source familiar with the mall’s operations told me that security spending there increased by roughly 20 percent between 2020 and 2021. That’s real money for a property already working with tight margins.
The National Chains Are Spending Big, Too
Mall operators aren’t alone in writing bigger checks. National retailers with heavy Memphis footprints are pouring money into loss prevention at individual stores.
Walmart, which operates more than two dozen locations across the Memphis metro area, has been public about its concerns. CEO Doug McMillon told investors in late 2021 that theft was putting pressure on profit margins and could force store closures in some markets if the trend didn’t reverse. Walmart’s approach varies by location. Some stores have added customer hosts at exits. Others have installed self-checkout cameras that flag scanned-versus-bagged mismatches. In higher-theft locations, the company has hired third-party security guards to stand at entrances and patrol aisles.
Kroger, which runs dozens of stores across Shelby County under its own banner and through its Delta Division, has also ramped up spending. Kroger’s Memphis division includes stores on Union Avenue, Summer Avenue, Poplar Avenue, and out in Cordova. Employees at several locations told me that new cameras were installed in the second half of 2021, and at least two high-volume stores added uniformed guards during evening hours.
Dollar General is another company feeling the squeeze. The Goodlettsville, Tennessee-based chain has thousands of locations across the state, many in high-crime urban and rural areas. Dollar General’s stores are small, often staffed by just one or two employees, and packed with merchandise near the doors. That combination makes them easy targets. The company reported in its 2021 earnings calls that shrinkage was eating into margins, and it has tested various approaches including upgraded camera systems and restricted access to certain aisles.
Memphis as a Logistics Hub: Warehouse Security Is Growing Too
Retail theft gets the headlines, but there’s another security story playing out in the warehouses and distribution centers scattered across the Memphis metro.
Memphis is one of the largest logistics hubs in North America. FedEx’s world headquarters sits at 942 South Shady Grove Road, and the company’s superhub at Memphis International Airport handles millions of packages every night. Nike operates a massive distribution center in the Frayser area. AutoZone, headquartered on Front Street downtown, runs distribution operations across the region. International Paper’s global headquarters was on South Fourth Street until 2022.
All of this freight and warehouse activity creates demand for security. Guards patrol loading docks, screen trucks at entry gates, and monitor surveillance feeds around the clock. Distribution center security is a different animal from retail. It’s about cargo theft, employee pilferage, and access control rather than shoplifters. An armed guard posted at a warehouse gate at 3 a.m. near the airport is doing work that barely resembles what an unarmed officer does at a shopping mall on a Saturday.
Several Memphis security companies have grown their revenue specifically through distribution and logistics contracts. The demand for guards who can handle late-night shifts at remote facilities, check manifests against loaded cargo, and operate access control systems has created a steady stream of new business. One local firm told me their warehouse and distribution contracts grew by 30 percent between 2020 and 2022.
Guard Companies Are the Winners, For Now
All this spending has to go somewhere, and much of it lands in the hands of contract security firms. Companies that provide uniformed guards to retailers, malls, and distribution centers are seeing more RFPs, bigger contracts, and longer terms than they saw before 2020.
The Memphis market supports dozens of licensed guard companies, from national firms like Allied Universal and GardaWorld down to family-owned operations with 30 or 40 officers. The NRF survey found that 46 percent of retailers planned to increase their loss prevention budgets in 2022. In a city where retail and logistics drive a significant share of the economy, that translates directly into more guard hours.
The catch, though, is that hiring is brutal. Guard companies across Memphis are competing for the same pool of workers, many of whom can make comparable money doing warehouse work for FedEx or Amazon without standing on their feet in a parking lot at midnight. Starting pay for unarmed guards in Memphis sits between $12 and $15 per hour, depending on the company and the post. Armed guards pull $16 to $20. That’s better than it was in 2019, but it still isn’t enough to fill every open position.
One security company owner I spoke with on Lamar Avenue described the labor market as “the tightest I’ve seen in 25 years.” He said he had contracts he couldn’t fully staff and clients willing to pay higher rates if he could find the bodies. “I could hire 50 guards tomorrow if they walked through the door,” he said.
Is It Actually Working?
That’s the question nobody wants to answer directly. Memphis retailers are spending more on loss prevention than at any point in recent memory. They’re adding guards, cameras, electronic article surveillance tags, locked display cases, and anti-theft packaging. They’re coordinating with local law enforcement through programs like the Memphis Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, which monitors hundreds of cameras across the city.
And yet the NRF’s numbers keep climbing. Shrinkage went from $61.7 billion in 2019 to $90.8 billion in 2020 to $94.5 billion in 2021. Some of that is driven by higher retail prices. When a stolen item costs more, the dollar loss goes up even if the number of thefts stays flat. Some of it is driven by organized retail crime, where theft rings steal goods in bulk and resell them online through platforms like Amazon and eBay.
In Memphis, the challenge is compounded by a violent crime backdrop that makes property crime feel secondary. The city recorded 342 homicides in 2021, breaking the previous year’s record of 332. When police resources are stretched by shootings and carjackings, retail theft investigations get pushed down the priority list. Store managers know this. Security directors know this. And the theft rings know it too.
So the spending continues. More guards at Wolfchase. More cameras at Kroger. More locked cases at Walmart. More patrols at the warehouses off Holmes Road. The money is real, the effort is genuine, and the problem isn’t getting smaller.
The guard at Wolfchase will be there again next Saturday. He’ll stand near the food court, feet planted, scanning the crowd. The whole building knows it won’t stop the bleeding. They keep paying for him anyway, because the alternative — doing nothing — is worse.