Today I went for a walk and found myself standing in the parking lot of a Ukrop’s, a grocery store chain that seems ubiquitous in central Virginia. The store is not opened on Sundays, so I was shocked and confused to find all of its plant wares still displayed in front of the store. It was weird seeing tables full of plants, racks of hanging plants, and even ornamental trees just sitting out, with not a soul around.
I looked to see if the plants were secured or chained down somehow. They were not.
Now, I’m not a saint but I felt guilty just standing there with all those unguarded beauties. Surely there are others who wouldn’t hesitate to help themselves. That’s just the way humans are. So why would a business make it easier for them? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Maybe I’ll head over there later and check it out. I’m thinking maybe they rely on video surveillance, motion alarms and/or good lighting to deter thieves, perhaps.
Hmm. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of Ukrop’s but I had a similar experience recently.
The local UU church had a plant and garden sale last weekend. They asked all the donated plants and such to be dropped off on Friday. Saturday afternoon they took them all out to the sidewalk and set up the displays then left them there overnight for the sale Sunday morning.
Struck me as astonishing. But that’s what they did.
I find it more amazing that a grocery store is closed on Sundays. That seems to be the day that everyone does their weekly shopping around here. I just got back and it was packed.
Almost every grocery store around here is open 24/7, and at least part of the time on holidays.
Just a WAG, but its getting pretty late in the season for many of the smaller plants. Their sale value is prime in May/June, and starts going down fast after July 4th Long Weekend. (Think about how much a calender is worth in late January…)
The larger plants, furnature, etc… I assume that someone “forgot”…Or do you live in Mayberry?
Gardening equipment can be incredibly valuable. We had a lawnmower stolen from the (locked) shed and were told that there was a gang of thieves hitting the local area for any equipment or furniture they could lay their hands on. They worked hard at it too - our insurance company said they’d pay up this time but we had to get better security than just a padlock. So we put a couple yales, hasps closed by padlocks, padlocked bolts, a deep internal lock with detachable operating mechanism which was kept indoors. So the thieves just cut the door off and removed our replacement mower. The third one stays in the house.
Maybe it’s too labor intensive for them to move all of it in and then out at opening and closing and they would rather just take their chances on loss as opposed to taking all the time to move them … ?
That’s what we do with all of our plants. If we get 100 plants in we count on selling about 80 of them, the rest will die/not sell/get stolen. It would cost more to haul them in and pull them out everyday. Plus you’d wind up with some of them getting damaged sooner or later.
::scratches head::
Why wouldn’t people buy plants and trees?
Besides, if it didn’t sell, the store certainly wouldn’t have it.
And if you are correct that they are just putting stuff outside to draw in customers and didn’t think it was going to sell, it would be a bad business move to use perishable items.
Around here every spring different nursery companies open temporary outdoor flower/plant shops in the parking lots of grocery stores. It usually consists of a plastic tent of some type to keep the “shade” plants in and the rest are outside. The only wall they have around the place is a temporary split rail fence.
If anyone really wanted to they could pull a van next to it in the middle of the night and load it up, however they’d have to be fairly brave since they are in a big empty well lit parking lot.
I think a few have had problems because they do have signs posted saying they give rewards to anyone reporting theft activity.
