S1 Ep 4
Managing Forecourt Losses
Managing forecourt losses are a live issue globally. Both operating models for petrol / gas forecourts bring their own challenges.
Either the shopper fills up and then goes inside the store to pay for their fuel and then (hopefully) other purchases, or they are asked to pre-pay by either going into the store or paying at the pump before fuelling.
The benefit of the pre-payment model is the risk of loss, through drive offs, or the customers not having a means of payment, is near zero. However, this model adds friction to the shopper journey and does not optimise the up-selling opportunity inside the shop.
In this podcast, Professor Adrian Beck and Colin Peacock consider how some retailers are managing forecourt losses and lowering the risk of drive offs through computer vision using ANPR / LPR technology, digital incident reporting. While also recognising the importance of collaboration, especially with law enforcement to further reduce and prevent the risk of drive offs.
Podcast summary
Managing forecourt losses is a tough and persistent problem for petrol retailers, especially when it comes to drive-offs and no means of payment incidents on forecourts.
Colin Peacock and Professor Adrian Beck recap recent industry discussions on how technology like ANPR, digital reporting and better integration can help identify repeat offenders and reduce non-payment of fuel.
They also explore practical barriers, including inconsistent staff reporting, limited access to driver details, and ongoing frustrations about information sharing between retailers and authorities.
Looking ahead to a follow-up meeting, they highlight the need for easier reporting workflows and stronger collaboration to make progress stick.
Cleaned transcript
Managing Forecourt Losses: drive-offs and no means of payment
COLIN:
Hello and welcome to the ECR Retail Loss Sell More and Lose Less podcast series.
My name is Colin Peacock.
This week I’m joined by Professor Adrian Beck and we’re looking at the problem of drive-offs and no means of payment in petrol forecourt stations.
We’re exploring the role of technology such as ANPR, digital reporting and collaboration in solving one of the toughest problems in retail.
Technology to Manage Forecourt Losses and catch repeat offenders
ADRIAN:
What was interesting was we had some really lively and informed presentations by a number of retailers who are clearly working very hard in this area.
I think some of them made some quite impressive progress in terms of managing forecourt losses, in particular driveaways and non-payment of fuel, and so on.
There was some great learning around the approaches that they were adopting.
This is very much a problem that can certainly be managed through technologies.
It’s one of those situations where it’s very rare you end up with offenders who purposely carry around some form of ID as they’re doing their crime.
Imagine if shoplifters were walking into the store with a recognisable licence plate hanging around their neck so you could go away and look them up on a database.
So there’s a lot of technology-based approaches that can, I think, help retailers.
Sharing information: frustrations with integration and enforcement
ADRIAN:
What we also heard was, yet again, there are still issues around the challenges of trying to get integration.
How can retailers share their information with each other, but also with the authorities, particularly those that hold information around the licence plate numbers for the offending cars?
And the police themselves in terms of prosecutions.
There’s still, I think, a lot of frustration within the industry around the challenges of trying to get the information to be shared that can help everybody.
There are also issues around collating evidence between retail organisations, and getting access to the information to speed this whole process up.
So there are a lot of pluses around some clever use of technologies, but still some frustrations around the limitations of getting the information that can enable these organisations to be more effective in this area.
Managing Forecourt Losses: access to driver details and prioritisation
COLIN:
Yeah, I think you said it quite well, sort of almost like the solution to this is almost in our hands, and yet somehow we’ve construed it.
There are still bits missing, such as being able to look up the driver details that other organisations like parking organisations have.
Yet the petrol retailers don’t seem to have that, at least the ones that were on the call.
It’s interesting also to accept how big a priority this is for some retailers.
We clearly saw some retailers acting faster than others, some slower than others.
I guess that reflects the fact that there’s lots of fires burning for retailers, especially if they’ve got a petrol forecourt as well as a big store.
Measuring the problem and making reporting easier
ADRIAN:
One of the questions that really hasn’t been answered by this group so far is how do petrol forecourt losses compare to store-based losses?
How big of a problem is it compared to the problem that’s happening next door in the store itself?
What percentage of sales is being lost through this problem?
We haven’t actually got that number yet, and it would be very interesting to know.
We heard retailers who were making an investment decision not to roll this technology out across all of their forecourts, only some of them.
So it makes you think: how big a problem is it, or are you able to measure it as well as you would hope, to begin to understand the size of the prize in terms of investment in these sorts of systems?
We heard some really successful data around the ability to block persistent offenders by being able to identify them, and trying to deal with some of the cloning issues.
Digital reporting to Manage Forecourt Losses
ADRIAN:
There was a really interesting point made by one of the retailers, which was: we’ve seen this in store-based problems too.
How do you get staff to use the reporting systems well and consistently?
These staff are not employed to be reporting people. They’re employed to serve the customers and to make sure they give a good service, and so on.
So how can you make it as easy as you can for them to use the systems that you’re making available?
I think we heard a couple of examples where they got their IT teams to integrate into the system, so staff could do this job quicker.
The look-up idea: if you want to test whether this car is related to other things, make it easy for the staff to do that quickly.
Otherwise they won’t do it, and they’ll move on to other things because they’re busy people.
I was very impressed by being able to get their IT teams involved and making some clever quick fixes that suddenly made reporting more effective, more reliable, and the system more effective.
That was very encouraging to hear.
Next steps on Managing Forecourt Losses and a January 2025 follow-up
COLIN:
Yeah.
We’ll review this meeting again in January 2025 and see what progress has been made.
I know a lot of them were saying that they were doing stuff in this space.
Patrick said that there will be some follow-up on the digitisation of some of these look-up menus around the driver details, and so on.
So it’ll be interesting, and I shall certainly look forward to it.
Thank you very much for that quick recap, and I’ll see you next time.
ADRIAN:
Cheers, Colin.
Bye bye.
Take care.
COLIN:
Bye bye.
