Walk into Wolfchase Galleria on a Saturday afternoon right now and you’d almost forget the last sixteen months happened. The food court is packed. Foot Locker has a line. The parking lot off Stage Road is nearly full by noon.
Almost normal. Almost.
The difference is behind the scenes. Store managers across Memphis are dealing with a security environment that looks nothing like what they had in February 2020. The doors are open, the customers are back, and the problems are brand new.
The Stores Came Back. The Staff Didn’t.
Here’s the number that matters most: Memphis retail locations are operating with roughly 15-20% fewer employees than they had before COVID shut everything down. That figure comes up in nearly every conversation I’ve had with store managers and loss prevention directors over the past month.
Fewer cashiers means more self-checkout lanes. More self-checkout lanes means more theft. It’s that straightforward.
The Kroger on Union Avenue installed four additional self-checkout stations during 2020. A manager there told me shrinkage at those stations runs about three times higher than at staffed registers. “We knew it would go up,” he said. “We didn’t think it would go up that much.”
The National Retail Federation pegged total retail shrinkage at $61.7 billion nationally in 2019, the most recent year with complete data. Nobody I’ve talked to in Memphis thinks 2020 or 2021 will come in lower. Most expect the number to climb significantly when those figures eventually get published.
Oak Court Mall, Southland Mall, Carrefour at Kirby Woods. They’re all fully operational now. Shelby County lifted its remaining capacity restrictions earlier this year. Governor Lee ended the statewide mask mandate long before that. Tennessee was one of the first states to drop COVID rules entirely.
The result is a retail sector that’s physically open and operationally strained.
Organized Retail Crime Is Getting Worse
Loss prevention teams in Memphis are tracking a noticeable increase in organized retail crime rings this year. These aren’t shoplifters stuffing candy bars in their pockets. These are coordinated groups hitting multiple stores in a single day, targeting specific high-value merchandise, and reselling it online within hours.
The Walmart on Covington Pike has been hit repeatedly. The one on Raines Road, same story. Target stores along Germantown Parkway have reported similar patterns. Groups come in, fill carts or bags with electronics, cosmetics, or brand-name clothing, and walk out. Sometimes they run. Sometimes they don’t even bother running because they know the store’s policy prohibits employees from physically stopping them.
“Our associates are told not to confront,” a district loss prevention manager for a major retailer told me. He asked that his company not be named. “That’s been the policy for years. The difference now is that the theft groups know the policy too.”
Memphis Police respond when called, and they do make arrests. The challenge is volume. MPD is stretched across a city of 650,000 with about 2,000 officers, and retail theft calls compete with violent crime for priority. A shoplifting report at a strip mall on Winchester Road doesn’t get the same urgency as a shooting call in Whitehaven.
The Curbside Pickup Problem
COVID created curbside pickup. Customers loved it. Retailers kept it. And now security teams have to figure out how to protect it.
Designated curbside areas create new vulnerabilities that didn’t exist two years ago. Employees carry merchandise outside to waiting cars, often with limited visibility from the store interior. Parking lot theft, where someone grabs a bag from a pickup area before the actual customer arrives, has become a real issue at several Memphis locations.
One security consultant I spoke with described it as “a loading dock that faces the public.” Merchandise sits in staging areas near exits. Employees shuttle back and forth. The traditional model of keeping product secured inside the store until a customer pays and walks out with it doesn’t apply anymore.
Some stores have added camera coverage to their curbside zones. Others have hired security officers specifically to monitor pickup areas during peak hours. A few have done nothing and are absorbing the losses.
Guards Are Being Asked to Do Things They Weren’t Hired For
This might be the biggest shift happening in Memphis retail security right now. The role of the security guard has expanded well beyond what it was in 2019.
Before COVID, a retail security officer’s job was relatively defined: watch for shoplifters, handle trespassers, maybe escort employees to their cars after closing. Now guards are being asked to manage mask confrontations, enforce store-specific health policies, monitor capacity in some locations, and deal with customers who are generally more aggressive than they were two years ago.
The mask issue deserves its own discussion. Tennessee has no statewide mask requirement. Shelby County dropped its mandate. Individual stores can still require masks if they want to, and some do. That puts the security guard in the position of telling a customer to put on a mask in a state where the government has said masks aren’t required.
“I had a guard quit after a customer threatened to shoot him over a mask,” one Memphis security company owner told me. “The guard was making thirteen dollars an hour. He said it wasn’t worth dying over a piece of cloth.”
These confrontations are happening at grocery stores, big box retailers, and pharmacies across Shelby County. Guards are being pulled into conflicts that have nothing to do with traditional security work, and the emotional toll is real.
How Budgets Are Shifting
The money is moving. That’s the clearest trend I can identify across Memphis retail security right now.
Traditional lobby guards, the officer standing near the entrance checking receipts or just being visible, are being cut. Not everywhere, and not all at once, but the direction is clear. Retailers are reallocating those dollars toward technology and mobile coverage.
Camera systems are the biggest winner. Several Memphis retailers have upgraded to high-definition systems with analytics capabilities during the past year. These systems can flag unusual behavior patterns, track individuals across multiple camera feeds, and store footage for longer periods. The cost has come down enough that mid-sized stores can afford what only large chains could justify five years ago.
Mobile patrol is another growth area. Instead of posting one guard at one store for eight hours, some retailers are contracting for patrol services that cover multiple locations in a loop. A patrol car hits each store every 30-45 minutes, checks the parking lot, walks through the store, and moves on. It’s cheaper per location and provides coverage across more sites.
The trade-off is obvious: you lose the dedicated presence. A guard who’s physically in your store all day sees patterns and knows the regulars. A patrol officer who stops by for fifteen minutes gets a snapshot. For some stores that trade-off makes sense financially. For others, particularly stores with high theft rates or in higher-crime areas, it doesn’t.
What I’m Hearing From Security Companies
I’ve talked to six Memphis-area security companies over the past three weeks about retail contracts. The picture that emerges is consistent across most of them.
Retail clients want more coverage for less money. The pandemic crushed margins, and security budgets are under pressure even as threats increase. Companies are being asked to provide technology solutions (cameras, access control, remote monitoring) alongside traditional guard services, sometimes at the same price point as guard-only contracts from 2019.
Finding guards willing to work retail posts is harder than it’s ever been. The job is less attractive now. Pay hasn’t kept pace with the expanded responsibilities. A guard at a warehouse or construction site doesn’t have to deal with mask arguments or organized theft rings. Retail posts are tougher work for the same money.
The companies that are winning retail contracts right now seem to be the ones offering blended solutions: some on-site guard hours combined with camera monitoring, mobile patrol, and incident reporting technology. Pure guard-service proposals are losing to these hybrid approaches.
The Summer Ahead
Memphis retail is entering its first normal summer since 2019. School’s out. Wolfchase will be crowded with teenagers. The outdoor shopping areas along Poplar will be busy on weekends. Germantown’s shops will see steady traffic.
The theft will get worse before it gets better. That’s not pessimism; it’s pattern recognition. Organized retail crime groups have spent the pandemic refining their methods, and the combination of reduced staff, more self-checkout, and overwhelmed police creates conditions that favor them.
Retailers who invest in security now, in cameras, lighting, training, and yes, guards where they make sense, will lose less merchandise and deal with fewer incidents. Those who try to ride it out on pre-COVID security plans will find that 2021 is a different year in ways they didn’t anticipate.
The stores are open. The customers are spending. The threats have changed. And Memphis retail security is still figuring out what the new normal actually looks like.
Sarah Chen covers the security industry in Memphis and the Mid-South. Contact her at tips@memphissecurityinsider.com.