One of the rare references in the general media to private security, let alone of security in the QSR (quick service restaurant) sector, came last year when Greggs was seeking permission from Westminster City Council, to open late at a ‘flagship’ outlet in Leicester Square, and proposed security officers. The novelty was of a branch of the bakery chain needing guarding.
The media’s implication was that Greggs had become part of the cherished self-image of the English, alongside such staples as approachable, unarmed police and cricketers gentlemanly in defeat. Such an image, if it were ever true, is outdated; the reality of England is more kaleidoscopic; more potholed.
Yet Greggs, and other chains, have become a part of the high street and therefore of Englishness, whether they sell burgers (McDonald’s), fried chicken (KFC) or doughnuts (Tim Hortons). Their very popularity brings crime, and nuisance behaviour; besides, they share the wider risks of the impoverished-looking (more or less everywhere) high street. The chiefs of Greggs and McDonald’s UK were among UK retail figures who signed a British Retail Consortium letter to the (new) Home Secretary James Cleverly in September, citing ‘unacceptable levels of violence and abuse’ against retail workers and asking the authorities to do more.
Indeed, in some ways the profile of QSRs makes them the most at-risk part of a high street. A Co-op convenience store will open from 7am, and at a city centre unit in the first hour a member of staff may stand at the door to silently vet each person coming through the door and activate door access to let each customer out, to guard against desperate homeless people; a Greggs may well open at 6.30am, even 6am.
The advertising for a QSR name may well promote the space as open to all, regardless of age or circumstance: the (divorced) dad taking a child there on a Saturday morning, the young women winding down or up on a night out, shoppers and even the elderly in between. That does mean that children get used to a QSR chain, as warm, and a source of free wi-fi; given the demise of local government youth clubs, where else can teenagers go?
Hence it’s far from unusual to see a town or city McDonald’s with an SIA-badged security officer, such as (to name one place hardly with a name for crime) Lincoln. It may seem remarkable, given how many pubs will have a single SIA-badged doorman, that the largest big-city McDonald’s may have several on a Saturday night. That speaks of the zoo-like Saturday night-time in cities such as Newcastle, and Glasgow along Sauchiehall Street, that builds up from lunchtime; indeed, the comparison is disrespectful to zoos, if the animals are asleep at night.
Why should QSRs have more door staff than pubs, that have alcohol that as a matter of science changes behaviour? It’s also a matter of chemistry that young males have testosterone that can lead to disorder, whether among their group or over some girl. And (as in the night-time economy generally) door security will tell you that females can behave worse than males. Behaviour that the non-security staff may well be expected to clear up after (literally, whether nuggets thrown or clumps of hair pulled out in fights). That speaks to the blurring of security and non-security roles in retail, due to the minimum staffing and the breakdown in social norms.
That is not to bemoan ‘gone are the days when’, but inevitably it’s based on anecdote, whether from witnesses or second or third-hand, spread farther and faster than ever on social media (which matters if that influences mobile law-abiding customers’ decisions about where to eat). Teens of past generations may have been scallywags but knew better than to take on adults; for one thing, because if a situation escalated to fisticuffs, the teen might well come second. Some teens may lack restraint towards adults asking teenagers to tone down their behaviour in a QSR, not necessarily because the teens are feral, but because their social nous is lacking.
How is a QSR chain to mitigate such risks? A guard on every door, every opening hour? Hardly. The Greggs annual report for 2022 last year stated the chain has 2300 shops and has ambitions to have 3000. You can do the maths of a minimum wage security officer (£10.42 since April 2023, and from April rising to £11.44) if a shop is open 70 hours a week. As Greggs’ pre-tax profit in 2021 and 2022 was in the order of £140m, such a guarding spend would leave little profit left.
Which leaves tech. As in some convenience stores, a panic button can operate a link to a monitoring centre that can dial into the video cameras, so that an operator (or a recorded message) can over a loudspeaker inform the nuisance-makers that police have been called. Here, though, as with retail generally (and incidentally Greggs’ expansion includes into supermarkets as cafes, and in some Primark stores), the problem is police response; inconsistent, or lacking.
Sympathy for the short-handed police among private security is general. Yet, while unspoken, certainly in public, the police attitude to businesses (and universities) is that they can afford their own policing solutions, leaving police to respond to citizens. Gone are the days when, yes, police might be too stretched on a Friday or Saturday night, and might leave unanswered a phone call about a rowdy or getting out of hand party on your street, or a moody teen storming out of the family home and the parents were anxious, or the pub punch-up spilling onto the pavement, or the car crash on a crossroads out of town, or the domestic abuse 999. Now the list of more jobs than officers on shift can possibly cover in full – let alone those carried over from the shift before – is routine. It means that the alarm activation at a QSR will not get a prompt, or any, police response; and the youths inside the QSR know that.
Photo by Mark Rowe: security patroller, winter Saturday evening, Weston super Mare McDonald’s.
