Waitrose is offering free coffees to police officers who attend their stores in a bid to tackle shoplifting, as crime rates surge amid the cost-of-living crisis.

According to The Times, the ‘thanks a latte’ plan will reduce thefts by encouraging law enforcement to make stops in stores.

Officers will be able to claim a free coffee each if they bring a reusable cup to a Waitrose or John Lewis store.

Assaults on Waitrose employees have roughly doubled since 2020, according to the British Retail Consortium.

Physical assaults on front-line store workers have risen 30% year-on-year while anti-social behaviour and verbal abuse are up by a fifth (20%), with 850 cases of abuse against store staff recorded daily.

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John Lewis’s head of security Nicki Juniper said that the rise in thefts is not a direct result of the cost-of-living crisis, claiming the retail giant is targeted by “professional shoplifters stealing for greed”.

She added: “Just having a police car parked outside can make people think twice about shoplifting from our branches.”

The news comes amid the spike of shoplifting at Waitrose, as John Lewis Partnership’s director of security Lucy Brown told the BBC: “We’re seeing a real increase – some are one-off offenders but the majority are shoplifting on a regular basis, switching across all retailers.”

For Co-op stores, shoplifting has reached record levels, with an average of nearly 1,000 incidents each day in the first half of this year – an increase of 35%.

Additionally, the convenience retailer found that police failed to respond to 71% of serious retail crimes reported.