Ping! Another video popped up on our phones . Our hearts sank, and we thought ‘not again’ – while simultaneously feeling grateful to have the video at all. It was 8:00pm on 24 September 2023.
We were at home in Tenby, West Wales , and we were looking at the third video that day of the same two men shoplifting alcohol from our convenience shop. It was a video we had thanks to AI . But technology never used to be at the forefront of our business.
We took over Tenby Post Office in 2015, and quickly added a convenience shop. In 2020, we moved to a new location up the road, and purpose-built a joint convenience shop and post office. We now employ 14 people and we sell food, alcohol, stationery, magazines, cards and lots of local produce, like traditional Welsh cakes .
It’s incredibly hard work, but it’s very rewarding, too. Customers send us gifts and letters of thanks – one 85-year-old customer wrote thanking us for delivering her paper every week. And we’ll think, ‘That’s why we do it’.
But, as things started getting back to ‘normal’ after Covid, we started to notice things missing from the shelves. We’d do a stock check, go through our CCTV , identify certain patterns – and it shocked us to see the granular detail of what was being stolen. Alcohol was a major item, and pet food was another.
We realised we were losing around £26,000 per year to shoplifting – and we were horrified. We felt angry, because we provide a service to the community and the.
