ALPHA KEEPERS TO PROTECT BABY FORMULA
Every so often, I get my entire team together and we “blitz” a market. Essentially, the entire LP team for the area comes into one store for a weekend and tries to break the company record for highest single day shoplifting count. Of course, we stack the deck and pick a historically heavy weekend in the highest shrinking store in the area. This past month’s blitz proved to be quite an adventure, that all started with the discovery of Alpha Keepers in the most unusual location.
Not a lot slips by when there’s five agents and a manager in one store. We got to work around 9 and stayed throughout the night. We grabbed the first lifter at around 10am and it was one, right after the other all day long. We were also working with local law enforcement that set up a mobile command center of sorts where they would process the shoplifter. This was a targeted approach to identifying individuals that are involved in organized retail crimes. Part of the process is obtaining consent to search every vehicle.
It was our 5th or 6th booster of the day. The guy, walked out the store with 3 dozen pairs of headphones, valued at $50 each. He goes through the processing and officers gain consent to search his vehicle. Inside is a curious discovery; about 100 cans of infant formula thrown across the rear seat. I can tell immediately from the stickers that this is my product. We protect infant formula with Alpha Keepers, so how did he manage to get this many?
We pop the trunk and find even more. Under the trunk mat, we lift up the flooring and find probably 2 dozen or more Alpha Keepers, with my store’s stickers on the bottom. They’re not broken, nor are they damaged in any way. It seemed as if there was a breakdown in the process of how we protect infant formula, and this guy had figured it out and was exploiting us for thousands.
Of course, he wasn’t much of a talker once he was hit with a few felony charges, so it seemed as if it would remain a mystery on how he was able to remove the infant formula from the keepers. That mystery was short-lived as when our suspect got to the jail, deputies performed a more thorough pat down before he was booked. Inside of his underwear was an Alpha key. At some point in his travels, he was able to swipe one from a store that had lose physical security controls.
There was a good lesson to learn from this incident, and it’s one that I stress to managers very often. If we’re going to take the time, energy and money to protect infant formula, or any item for that matter, we have to ensure that all controls measures are in place to minimize the chance of someone breaking said controls. An important piece to that is securing the tools that remove the tools that stop shoplifters from stealing your goods!
Need information on Alpha Keepers? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
Every so often, I get my entire team together and we “blitz” a market. Essentially, the entire LP team for the area comes into one store for a weekend and tries to break the company record for highest single day shoplifting count. Of course, we stack the deck and pick a historically heavy weekend in the highest shrinking store in the area. This past month’s blitz proved to be quite an adventure, that all started with the discovery of Alpha Keepers in the most unusual location.
Not a lot slips by when there’s five agents and a manager in one store. We got to work around 9 and stayed throughout the night. We grabbed the first lifter at around 10am and it was one, right after the other all day long. We were also working with local law enforcement that set up a mobile command center of sorts where they would process the shoplifter. This was a targeted approach to identifying individuals that are involved in organized retail crimes. Part of the process is obtaining consent to search every vehicle.
It was our 5th or 6th booster of the day. The guy, walked out the store with 3 dozen pairs of headphones, valued at $50 each. He goes through the processing and officers gain consent to search his vehicle. Inside is a curious discovery; about 100 cans of infant formula thrown across the rear seat. I can tell immediately from the stickers that this is my product. We protect infant formula with Alpha Keepers, so how did he manage to get this many?
We pop the trunk and find even more. Under the trunk mat, we lift up the flooring and find probably 2 dozen or more Alpha Keepers, with my store’s stickers on the bottom. They’re not broken, nor are they damaged in any way. It seemed as if there was a breakdown in the process of how we protect infant formula, and this guy had figured it out and was exploiting us for thousands.
Of course, he wasn’t much of a talker once he was hit with a few felony charges, so it seemed as if it would remain a mystery on how he was able to remove the infant formula from the keepers. That mystery was short-lived as when our suspect got to the jail, deputies performed a more thorough pat down before he was booked. Inside of his underwear was an Alpha key. At some point in his travels, he was able to swipe one from a store that had lose physical security controls.
There was a good lesson to learn from this incident, and it’s one that I stress to managers very often. If we’re going to take the time, energy and money to protect infant formula, or any item for that matter, we have to ensure that all controls measures are in place to minimize the chance of someone breaking said controls. An important piece to that is securing the tools that remove the tools that stop shoplifters from stealing your goods!
Need information on Alpha Keepers? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
