The slip and fall claims for the fast food (QSR) restaurant had increased dramatically for both employees and customers.  The quarry tiles were in good condition and according to the management they were cleaned regularly and according to procedures.  My inspection of the tile surfaces did not show neglect or poor cleaning procedures usually indicated by a glossy sheen or greasy feel.  But when water was placed to the tiles they were indeed slippery.  So, what was going on?

“Pizza, pizza, pizza!  Everyday it’s pizza.  I get so tired of pizza that I eat free as a benefit of working here.  So, with a little ingenuity, our late night crew now gets a little variety in our diet.  We worked out a little trade with the other late night restaurants next door and across the street.  We exchange a few pizzas for chicken, tacos, burgers and fries.  Everybody’s happy!”  While investigating mysterious rising trends in food costs, I heard this kind of statement many times from employees, particularly those working the late night shifts.

You receive an email from a good friend lamenting about their misfortune of losing luggage and their phone while traveling in Europe.  They don’t want to bother you, but would you be willing to send them $940 so they can get home.   You know that they travel quite a bit, the request seems to be genuine, and you want to come to their rescue.

I could never quite figure the logic of capturing cash sales at the registers and then putting the cash into the store safe that was left vulnerable to theft in so many ways.

Credit card skimming in the restaurant industry is becoming more exposed as higher dollar theft cases are being made against restaurant workers.  This time in the Minneapolis – St. Paul area, seven were charged with stealing customer credit card information from those they served in the restaurant.

A customer denied helping steal a pricey exotic bird from a Naperville, IL pet store.  She said she didn’t know anything about stolen birds.  Just so happened, police inspected her purse and found several feathers that matched the bird and some bird seed.  “Ohhhhhhh, THAT bird!”  Now that’s what we in the loss prevention biz call - your evidence.  The incident was also captured on the store's security cameras. 

In the early stages of retailers and restaurant companies selling gift cards, we, in the loss prevention side of the industry learned about a different kind of fraud – cloning. Just a few years ago, the only reference I had to cloning involved sheep somewhere in England.

Shoplifting seems to be theme of the week.  Two articles in my local newspaper on the same day caught my eye.  The first was two guys that stuffed merchandise into backpacks while 60 police officers were in the store helping 155 children pick out clothes and school supplies for the annual “Shop With a Cop” event.   Evidently their theory was the officers would be too distracted to notice.  What they also counted on was the store security personnel also being distracted.  They weren’t.  Both went to jail charged with theft.

In our training classes, we often discuss customer service.  It is ALWAYS about listening to the customer and then delivering more than they expect.  Another topic we discuss with our clients is how relevant their rules, policies, and procedures are in the way they do business.  Do they make sense?   Very often, routines are entrenched that have become obsolete or no longer applicable in the marketplace.

A friend of mine who knows that I consult with retailers and restaurants on loss prevention sent me this e-mail below on an experience he had at his favorite fast food (QSR) restaurant.  Well, I guess I should say what used to be his favorite lunch spot.  Unfortunately, the situation he describes is not uncommon, and generally falls into the “unintended consequences” category.  The manager made some decisions, probably for good reasons, but with disastrous effects.   My friend does a pretty good job describing the various effects of those decisions on losses and profitability.  There was no presence of the usual suspects on profit drains – theft, manipulation, fraud or other crime.  It simply is poor management, but profit draining just the same.  Upset customers will give feedback on poor operations – they won’t come back.