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Tired of watching shoppers brazenly steal merchandise from the Hispanic grocery retailer where he is general manager and director of operations \u2014 and getting little help from the police \u2014 Luis Moreno turned to facial recognition to try to keep thieves out of his stores.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the problem that people would just go in there and fill up their shopping cart with, you name it, Tide, baby formula, items that they can resell on the black market, and then just basically felt entitled to them,\u201d said Moreno, whose chain, Fiesta Foods, operates three stores in Washington state.<\/p>\n
The system the company installed, supplied by RealNetworks and called SAFR Guard, immediately turned out to be an effective deterrent, enabling Fiesta Foods to dramatically cut down on shrink, Moreno said Monday during a panel session at the National Grocers Association\u2019s annual conference in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to upload pictures that we had in a binder and put them in the system [and when] they were doing the installation, there [were] people walking in that we were like, \u2018Hey, that\u2019s a repetitive offender,\u2019\u201d said Moreno.<\/p>\n
Sonja Noski, who owns and operates a Grocery Outlet store in Puyallup, Washington, with her husband, also said facial recognition has helped reduce theft in her store.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen [people] steal, they\u2019re stealing personally from my husband and I and my team and my family. So it\u2019s a very personal thing for me,\u201d said Noski.<\/p>\n
Like Fiesta Foods, Noski\u2019s store uses SAFR Guard, whose developer sponsored the session.<\/p>\n
Noski said she confronts people who the system has identified as shoplifters and asks them not to return, describing how she told one shopper who tried to enter that the system had conclusive proof that he had previously stolen goods from the store.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018You’re not welcome to shop here.\u2019 And he’s like, \u2018Oh, that was me?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018That was you.\u2019 And he goes, \u2018Yeah, maybe I remember.\u2019 And I said, \u2018So please get out.\u2019\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Moreno noted that SAFR generates a detailed report each month that shows the amount of money Fiesta Foods likely would have lost given the number of people it helped stop from shoplifting.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery month, we\u2019re sharing with our stores, this is safer, and this is how many dollars we actually prevented from walking out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Noski and Moreno both said they use signs to disclose to shoppers that they capture images of people\u2019s faces as they walk into their stores, adding that they have had to assuage concerns among customers uncomfortable with having their facial information recorded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking to a customer, and he was like, \u2018So I noticed you\u2019ve got a sticker on your door that says you have facial recognition.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Yeah, you know it\u2019s actually working really well for us,\u2019\u201d Noski recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018You know what, if it\u2019s saving a small business from shoplifting and that cost, I\u2019m all for it.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moreno said he was able to convince a shopper who said he would not return because Fiesta Foods uses facial recognition technology that the retailer\u2019s only intent with the system is to improve safety in the community, even taking the customer to breakfast to speak with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of the day, he was shopping back in the store, and that made me very, very happy,\u201d Moreno said.<\/p>\n
Noski and Moreono both said the facial recognition systems in their stores also provide the benefit of allowing them to track when employees show up for work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can always look at it and see who’s late, because it tells me when they walked in the front door,\u201d said Noski. \u201cAnd so I sometimes use that \u2026 to see who\u2019s on time.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Moreno and Noski said they have been able to convince shoppers of the value of facial recognition, the technology has been a public relations headache for Wegmans. The East Coast chain faced backlash last month following media reports that it uses facial recognition to \u201chelp identify individuals who pose a risk to our people, customers, or operation\u201d in a small number of its locations, including stores in New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Listen to the article 4 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Tired of watching shoppers brazenly steal merchandise from the Hispanic grocery retailer where he is general manager and director of operations \u2014 and getting little help from the police \u2014 Luis Moreno turned to facial recognition to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3259,3256,3254,3257,3255,3258,3252,3250,3253,3251],"class_list":["post-18525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington","tag-washington","tag-washington-dining","tag-washington-food","tag-washington-grocery-stores","tag-washington-restaurants","tag-washington-state","tag-washington-state-dining","tag-washington-state-food","tag-washington-state-grocery-stores","tag-washington-state-restaurants"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117293478812728661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}