Basket Case: Dozens of Rexburg grocery store shopping baskets disappear

They’re missing by the dozens, and gone without a trace.

Shopping baskets.

Store managers at a couple Rexburg grocery stores are scratching their heads on Friday as dozens and dozens of shopping hand-baskets leave the front doors, and never come back.

“We always have people asking, ‘Where’s your baskets?'”said Broulim’s Rexburg manager Ian Martinson. “We’re like, ‘We don’t know.”

Martinson can’t remember how many times he’s had to give that bad news this week.

“We’ve been noticing our baskets disappearing,” he said.

Where towering stacks of hand-baskets once awaited shoppers, now there are only a few survivors.

“Don’t know where they’re going,” he said. “They’re just not here any more.”

One by one, and then by the dozens, the baskets just seem to be walking out the door. Broulim’s used to have about 80 baskets. There are only about a third of that left.

“It’s just been very inconvenient for our customers,” said Martinson.

But the customers aren’t the only folks suffering as Broulim’s goes basket-broke.

A stack of 16 of those little baskets can cost the store well over a hundred dollars. The custom Broulim’s logo printed on the side costs even more. For Martinson, that’s money walking out the door.

“It’s hard for us because we don’t want to incur more cost in purchasing the baskets,” said Martinson.

Martinson said he doesn’t want to point a finger. He doesn’t have any idea who’s making off with the baskets, but he said he’d like to see them make their way home.

The manager at the Rexburg Albertson’s store said he has seen the same mysterious disappearance of hand-baskets lately.

About 30 baskets are missing from that store.