So what are grocery store patrons using the five-finger discount on?

This may come as a shock, as it did for me, but apparently single most common item which some grocery store patrons choose to use their five-finger discounts on is meat. That’s right, based on statistics alone, prime-cuts are one of the hotter items on the unaccounted-for-list come stock replacement time.

et most shoppers who use the five-finger discount in the meat aisle are neither so brazen nor so desperate. Carts brimming with groceries, they’ll stealthily slide a single tenderloin or T-bone into a coat pocket, then hit the checkout line alongside their nonlarcenous peers. In this way, millions of pounds of beef, pork, and veal disappear from supermarket shelves each year. Meatlifting is a grave problem for food retailers: According to the Food Marketing Institute, meat was the most shoplifted item in America’s grocery stores in 2005.

Who would have thought right? Meat! Of all things in a grocery store, the 2005 hot item of the year was meat.