A San Francisco Safeway store has installed new security measures.

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At the Safeway on San Francisco’s King Street, you now can’t leave the store unless you buy something. The Mission Bay grocery store recently installed new anti-theft measures at the entrance and exit.

New gates at the entrance automatically swing open when customers walk in, but they’re set to trigger an alarm if someone attempts to back out. And if you walk into Safeway and change your mind about grocery shopping, you might find yourself trapped: Another gate that only opens if you scan your receipt blocks the store’s sole exit.

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A customer enters the Safeway on Fourth and King streets in San Francisco through a swinging gate on Nov. 3, 2025.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

During my Monday visit, I purchased a kombucha and went through the check-out line without incident. (No high-tech gates block the exit if you go through the line like normal.) But for journalism’s sake, I then headed back into the store to try going out the new gate.

While I watched some customers struggle with the new technology, my receipt scanned immediately. The glass doors slid open, and I was free. But if, like this person on the San Francisco subreddit recounted, I hadn’t bought anything, my only means of exit would have been to beg the security guard to let me out.

A new security gate has been installed at the Safeway on Fourth and King streets in San Francisco, where customers need to show their receipt to leave the store from an exit.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

I couldn’t reach a Safeway spokesperson for comment on the new gates before the time of publication, but this is not the first time we’ve seen these sliding gates in SF Safeway stores. In 2023, KPIX-TV reported that Safeway stores in the Excelsior and the Fillmore neighborhoods (the Fillmore store has since closed) had installed receipt-scanning gates at self-checkout.

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“Recent changes were made at select Safeway stores in the Bay Area ... given the increasing amount of theft. Those updates include operational changes to the front end of the stores to deter shoplifting,” a Safeway spokesperson told KPIX-TV in a statement at the time.

A customer uses their receipt to exit from a security gate that has been installed at the Safeway on Fourth and King streets in San Francisco, where customers need to show their receipt to leave the store from an exit.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

In May 2024, SFGATE reported that a few Bay Area Safeway stores had removed their self-checkout sections due to theft issues. The Target at 789 Mission St. in SF also removed self-checkout in 2023, SFGATE reported. The 298 King St. Safeway store no longer has self-checkout, although it is unclear when it was removed.

Daniel Conway, the vice president of government relations for the California Grocers Association, told SFGATE in 2023 that these measures were part of a growing national trend of “defensive retailing.”

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“While I can’t speak for any one company, you see the trajectory of commerce over the last 10, 20, 5,000 years, it’s all about reducing friction for customers,” Conway said. “But now you’re seeing a countervailing trend: armed guards and Tide Pods locked up.”

Nov 5, 2025|Updated Nov 5, 2025 12:11 p.m.

Senior Food Reporter

Madeline Wells is a senior food reporter at SFGATE, where she has covered the Bay Area restaurant scene since 2019. Her column “Eat Like a Tourist” won a San Francisco Press Club award in 2023. She’s a graduate of UC Berkeley and previously worked at Oakland alt-weekly East Bay Express. You can email her at madeline.wells@sfgate.com.