Pretty much every grocery store of this size around the Eastern MA area has video cameras on every aisle. Just call the cops while assisting the little reprobates off the floor and getting them cleaned up. Escort them to the manager’s office and then review the tape, arrest them while they make arrangements for restitution.
Video cams: around late 85, early 86, I was a department manager at the Swampscott, MA Bradlees, a now defunct dept store chain (at Bradlees you buy what Mrs B buys, and nobody can buy like Mrs B). Part of my training was sitting with the head of security in his little office and showing how they dealt with shoplifters. A woman was brought in and a policeman was there writing her up, etc.; her kids were nearby. They had been observed shoplifting by the cameras...
...stuffing merch into their clothes or whatever... The pinch had been made and when she started to cry about being hauled off to the police station (I’m a little fuzzy on this), “what about my children?” she was told “you shoulda thought about that before you shoplifted”. Maybe she wasn’t being hauled off to the police station, maybe to an area just outside the store...again this was awhile ago.
At a slower moment, the security guy showed how he recorded off one camera, hit pause, and the customer “disappeared”
because he resumed recording and they’d moved away. It was kinda like the special effect they used on Bewitched.