The main issue is spiky demand, you’d have keep a cadre of employees around to minimize peak latency. Offloading tasks to the shopper scales well with usage.

In 2023, shrinkage at Costco was less than 0.2%, vs a US national average of 1.44%.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-winning-war-against-re...

This isn't a situation that requires a social contract where they follow some rules. The ease of shoplifters "not following the rules" with fake/stolen identities will simply approach the experience of someone trying to do the same with an airline ticket.

> Shoplifters aren't going to follow any of those rules, they'll just use fake or stolen card or identities.

I think you'd be surprised.

And in any case, some shoplifters will obviously be dissuaded by the need to get a fake or stolen card in the first place.

Costco now checks your picture against your card on entry.

The store tends to always be there, there is often times need to have a lot of them, and they're available at well known (even published) times whereas the van isn't always at the same places at the same time and doesn't even carry predictable goods... just that you know there will be goods. Sure you can guess or make your luck by waiting for the van or search for it in good spots... but the cost is higher for the criminal to try and count on such a thing.

The truth is I expect stealing from a delivery van is ultimately simpler... or simply stealing the package off the porch easier still. The issue isn't the ease or difficulty.

Where I expect consumer delivery businesses to do better in the face of theft is on the cost of theft (assuming a certain scale in the delivery business). Given the economies of scale of a warehouse and the delivery model vs traditional retail locations, I bet means the loss for any item stolen from the van is less than that of the same item stolen from a traditional retail location.