There are many strategies that convenience stores can use to keep employees and customers safe. Kelly Harrington (pictured right), director of asset protection at Atlanta-based RaceTrac, and Wes Pate, senior director, loss prevention and risk management at Charleston, South Carolina-based Refuel Operating Co., spoke to some of these strategies in October at the NACS Show in Las Vegas.
“My role at RaceTrac is very broad, but at the end of the day, we’re here to keep our team members safe, protect them from crime victimization and ultimately prevent profit loss from things like theft and fraud and fuel losses, etc.,” Harrington said.
RaceTrac is No. 17 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by store count. Refuel Operating Co. is No. 36.
Harrington and Pate introduced a five-pillar approach to safety. The pillars are understanding store risk; physical security; internal training; community resources and local government; and law enforcement.
Store safety is a complex issue, Pate said, and not all these solutions will fit a retailer’s specific company or stores.
“What I encourage is for you to apply several of these, or all of these solutions,” Pate said. “A combination of these over time is what’s going to help create a safer environment.”
Here are some tips for convenience stores to get started on understanding store risk and physical security.
Understanding Store Risk
A good first step in creating a safety strategy is for a retailer to know the landscape of their business, Harrington said.
“You have to understand the landscape, the vulnerabilities, the potential challenges that you might get into at those unique locations,” he said.
To do this, Harrington creates a risk rating system for RaceTrac’s stores, using a combination of internal data on what’s happening in the stores with external crime data from resources like CAP Index. He starts with leveraging RaceTrac’s store teams and field operations leaders to tell him what’s going on in the stores.
“It’s important that you document that information,” Harrington said. “It doesn’t have to be a Rolls-Royce of case management systems. You could do something as simple as a spreadsheet where you’re writing down what happened, when it happened, time of day, location, just general information about the incident.”
Next, c-stores should categorize the types of incidents that are being reported and encourage employees to record these incidents. This will help the company decide where it needs to put its resources for safety.
Risk assessments are important and can include anything from crime to areas that are heavily impacted by weather events, like hurricanes, Pate said.
“There are really good threat management and early alert systems out there,” he said, encouraging retailers to lean on systems like NOAA for weather alerts. “And what those help do is it helps us know quicker; it helps us get accurate information. And we all know that the quicker we get the information, the quicker we can react, and the quicker we react the more people we can make sure are safe.”
Physical Security Tips
C-stores can partner with local police to help evaluate what physical changes they can make to improve safety at their stores. Retailers can do this through a CPTED evaluation, which stands for crime prevention through environmental design.
“It could be things like open landscaping versus dense shrubbery. Lighting. Do you have clear sight lines through your glass? And all of those things, believe it or not, have been proven through studies to be indicators of crime risk,” Harrington said.
Most law enforcement agencies will do a CPTED assessment on a retailer’s property for free, he said, and once they’ve walked through one store with a team, it will familiarize the retailer with the process so they can apply it to other stores.
C-stores can also consider the broken windows theory, Harrington said, which says that disorder and disarray, like broken lights or windows, will contribute to crime.
“Fix those conditions, because that will help,” he said. “Clean store, neat store, good appearance is all going to help the crime mitigation.”
There’s a wide array of technology that could help with crime mitigation in stores, Pate said, but having a good camera system is a good place to start. He recommends no fewer than 16 cameras, spread out by the point-of-sale, fuel pumps, exterior, sales floor, back rooms and more.
“I would argue that your camera systems in your stores can have a return on investment,” Pate said. “Because they’re not just about catching the person that’s taking $5 out of the till, or someone who’s taking the Snickers bar off the sales floor, but it’s about looking at all the critical incidents that happen in your store. And the great thing about cameras, is there is no lie. It’s all facts.”
Cameras are a long-term solution, he said. It might not stop a theft from happening tomorrow, but once a robber is caught, the word will get out, and crime will decrease, Pate said.
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