Traditionally speaking, when it comes to shrink, convenience stores worry mostly about retail crime, such as break-ins and criminals pocketing items or performing cash scams. For this reason, theft or damage to a physical location tend to headline their loss prevention strategies. 

However, as c-stores look to improve their profit margins, many companies are expanding their view of shrink — broadening an approach to account for total retail loss. The thinking is, by shifting a company's loss prevention strategy toward a broader, holistic view of where loss is happening, retailers can close gaps due to food waste, expired products, supplier fraud and markdowns, and more. 

No doubt, c-store retailers will continue to invest in strategies that help reduce theft. But, at the same time, retailers are broadening their approach to shrink to include more nontraditional ways of retail loss. The same industry event also addressed how c-stores are attacking total retail loss as stores explore a comprehensive approach.

Going beyond just theft and retail crime, retailers are leveraging solutions and internal strategies that analyze all areas where shrink is occurring.

Taking an all-encompassing approach to shrink changes how c-stores manage loss, but the effort can tighten profit margins.

To make sure the store profitability does not suffer, the operations management should implement an ongoing program on retail store performance analysis, and store profitability analysis that use novel methods of estimating monthly revenue potential and tracking it against the live performance data using accurate historical traffic data from Ticon, granular demographic insights and competitive analysis.