Industry Focus
Managing the “In Convenience” Truth
How bp’s New Global Retail Security Team is Fuelling the Drive for Safety
By its very definition, convenience is the state of mind where we possess the “ability to seamlessly proceed with something without difficulty” in the same way that its nemesis—inconvenience—brings positive movement to a grinding halt.
Former vice President Al Gore’s 2006 documentary on global warming—An Inconvenient Truth—was one such roadblock in that it held a mirror up to the US’s conspicuous consumption in a way that challenged the American dream of almost indomitable and infinite growth. It was inconvenient at the time but helped move the global thermostatic dial towards more alternative conveniences by providing a road map to the debate on how the richest nation on the planet could still be green and grow.
In retail, the word “convenience” has long-provided an identity for a whole sector where customers are able to buy anything at any time to suit any need as well as providing a sense of “being there when you need us” community spirit.
It gave new meaning to businesses as diverse as the 7-Eleven stores in the US and the ubiquitous corner shop in the UK, as well as the larger footprint fuel and food pit stops along the world’s highways and byways.
Welcoming everyone from commuters who want a coffee or a snack for their journey to local shoppers who are doing a top-up grocery shop or have run out of everyday essentials like milk and bread, the convenience sector is open all hours to provide “rescue remedy” solutions.
But it is a sector facing its own inconveniences as a direct result of that “welcome”, as some of its guests do not return that generosity—they are neither paying or pleasant in their approach and are looking to steal or simply take out their bad day on frontline convenience retail workers.
In 2025, the UK’s Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) reported that local shops experienced an estimated 6.2 million incidents of shop theft, a 10 per cent increase from the previous year’s 5.6 million incidents. Additionally, there were over 59,000 incidents of violence and 1.2 million incidents of verbal abuse in the convenience sector. The ACS concluded that the total cost of crime to the sector has risen to £316 million per year, equivalent to a 10p tax on every transaction.
The figures reflect an inconvenient truth for the entire sector, and this includes in the larger footprint convenience stores, like energy forecourts, that not only feed the nation but also fuel its mobility.
Retail forecourts on roads and motorways across the UK have long been known for selling food and drinks, as well as petrol and diesel. The mobility and convenience sector, as it is referred to by bp, is potentially more vulnerable to retail crime with 24-hour trading locations, the double-whammy of threats of violence to colleagues and robberies, as well as the impact of rising fuel crimes such as fraud and drive-offs without paying.
The Forecourt Crime Index from the British Oil Security Syndicate (BOSS) shows average annual losses from unpaid fuel incidents now stand at £8,800 a year for a forecourt, which is lower than previous estimates due to lower fuel prices. The average number of incidents per site in the last quarter of 2024 was 28.4, a marginal increase from 28.3 in the quarter before.
Claire Nichol, executive director at BOSS, says: “Although the overall increase in the Forecourt Crime Index is minimal, the ongoing issue of unpaid fuel incidents continues to be a concern for retailers.”
“Retailers must continue to prioritise vigilance, invest in security, and strengthen crime prevention strategies to mitigate losses.”
The latest Index highlights the need for improved security measures to deter such crimes and protect businesses from further losses.
“Forecourts can take steps to prevent unpaid fuel incidents by increasing staff vigilance and ensuring that surveillance systems are fully operational can also reduce fuel theft occurrences,” she added.
How bp Is in Action
Mobility and convenience retail providers such as bp are more than aware of the challenges for the sector in terms of colleague and customer safety, as well as lost revenue.
As one of the energy sector’s most iconic brands, with its striking green and yellow helios logo, bp is an integrated energy company employing more than 100,000 people across sixty-one countries. It says that it is one of only a few companies that can deliver energy at global scale through a decades-long energy transition.
With mobility and convenience operations on five continents, bp has a network of around 21,200 retail sites around the globe and is developing a leading EV charging business with over 40,000 bp pulse EV charging points in its core markets of China, Germany, the UK and the US.
bp Retail Security Leadership Team
With a new global retail security team established within bp to tackle the issue of increasing levels of abuse, shoplifting and crime, Loss Prevention Magazine Europe caught up with the new leaders as they focus on data-driven intelligence and collaborating with others in the sector to improve the safety of colleagues and customers across their global retail network, covering multiple brands.
Different time zones required different interview times to learn about what retail security and risk management looks like for bp across the globe.
As an all-female team, this team is quite unique in what has always been seen as a male-dominated sector, but according to global retail security manager Karen Warwick, it was never a question of gender but about hiring the right people with the right capabilities.
“We wanted to design a team that was fit for purpose for bp’s mobility and convenience business across multiple markets,” she said. “The fact that it is all-female was not planned—it was just a case of finding the best person for the job.”
“Around three thousand of our retail sites are company operated, the rest are dealer, or third party operated, which comes with its own challenges as the different operating models require different types of security support,” said Karen who is based in the UK.
Crime trends also differ across the globe in terms of severity. In the US, for example, where there is easier legal access to firearms, bp’s retail sites can potentially be targeted by armed robbers.
“As a business we are getting better at reporting so as not to normalise abuse. Post-COVID, things changed for a lot of people and tolerance levels dropped, with the result being that customers took out their rage on our colleagues. We strongly encourage our team members to report any incidents of abuse, and they can be assured that we treat these matters with the utmost seriousness. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their workplace. While most of our interactions with customers are positive, we will not tolerate any behaviour that threatens the safety and well-being of our colleagues.”
“We work for a company which has a lot of high-risk roles, for example in oil and gas production and operations, but people may be surprised to learn that colleagues are seven times more likely to lose their lives in retail than the entire oil and gas market combined, which is a staggering statistic,” she added citing a report written by Cammie Chaumont Menéndez, PhD, MPH, MS and Thomas Cunningham, PhD from the NIOSH Division of Safety Research.
“Retailers are often caught between a rock and a hard place, balancing the need to provide excellent customer service while protecting their colleagues, customers and inventory from rising aggression and theft. It’s a constant challenge of maintaining safety, trust, and profitability in an environment where every interaction can pose a risk.”
US Market
“Armed robberies are very challenging, and thankfully still fairly rare, but when they do happen, they are acute,” said Sheila Sorrentino, bp’s retail security manager for the Americas.
“As a business, we are a 24-hour operation and as we all know the evening is often when things happen—people are attracted to the bright lights of our stores when seeking safety—they run towards our sites for help which impacts our levels of risk.”
“Gun violence is a constant threat—it can easily spill over on to our sites, and our job is to protect colleagues and remove the burden from their shoulders.”
Across the entire bp network greater use of remote access technologies, intelligence, and reporting through a global security operations centre is part of the retail security leadership team’s ongoing strategy.
Mobile surveillance with cameras, lighting, and speakers to challenge suspicious criminal activity is another approach, with twenty-one such units currently deployed in high-risk US locations. Here the business is working with Live View Technologies (LVT) and looking at a model that is scalable to other markets.
“As a leadership team, we have much to learn from one another, for example the team’s approach to remote monitoring is one area we are looking at to see how we can capitalise on in other markets. Collaboration, learning and sharing are essential for progress across all our markets,” said Karen.
Sheila said training in non-confrontation was also a high agenda item for the security team in the US.
“There are a lot of communication triggers such as around age verification which can cause issues to escalate. We are making sure that colleagues keep their training refreshed and up to date with a mix of face-to-face sessions, quizzes, questionnaires and bespoke videos, with actors wearing our uniforms in simulated robberies.”
“This is part of how we ensure that we are doing everything we can to raise awareness of issues so that ultimately our store colleagues can get home safely every day,” she said.
Electric Vehicles
Colleagues are well-versed in dealing with “drive-off” crime—where a vehicle is filled with fuel but not paid for—and the ability to capture suspicious vehicle date through ANPR. However, in a changing world, the transition to electric vehicle (EV) infrastructures is likely to create different challenges as charge times will mean drivers are on-site longer.
“We always need to be one step ahead, considering all risks, such as how do we ensure that we’ve created a safe environment for the customers that may be on site for a longer period or charging their vehicle at night,” added Karen.
Then there is the spectre of EV crime with vandalism attacks on charging points to steal the cabling for its copper value, although Iona Blake, bp’s retail security manager in Europe, argues the effort involved in stealing it may outweigh the rewards.
“We don’t see so much of this issue in the UK because the copper alloy inside the cable is worth less than £10, which is not going to yield very much for a thief to re-sell. However, when it does happen it affects the utilisation of the unit and the customer experience while it is being repaired.”
Iona, who was previously at Boots as security and incident manager, now has a team of three under her European remit covering Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Luxembourg as well as the UK.
She said the 24/7 risk of retail crime warranted the creation of this new team. “We already work so well together,” she said.
“I love it because I feel stretched. When I was at Boots, I thought I was developing so much, but from the first minute I walked into bp I realised I could learn so much from everyone—there is no ego in the team whatsoever. There is also a great sense of community.”
“Currently, we are seeing what we can achieve through the analytics and data we are getting from the Auror retail crime intelligence platform that we are using in the UK and New Zealand. I was particularly excited about bp partnering with Auror, having seen the impact they’d had at Boots.”
“We want to use the intelligence and insights we get from technology like Auror when designing new retail sites in the future. What security measures could we need to include to keep colleagues and customers safe in specific locations? But security is not just about the tools for the job, it’s about the people who do it—it’s a holistic approach.”
Wider Roles
Some of the retail security leadership team—Sheila in the US and Emily Milner covering Australia and New Zealand (ANZ)—have wider security briefs within bp, working to protect bp’s people and assets in areas like aviation and at the Kwinana integrated energy hub, where there are maritime security requirements. These wider roles provide deeper insights into the security challenges bp faces in its wider business.
One of the key challenges Emily recognises in ANZ is the impact of tough Government stances on tobacco sales which impact the safety of the bp convenience retail teams. Loss Prevention Magazine Europe published a feature around the illicit tobacco black market, which resulted in high taxation to curb the habit in the southern hemisphere, in the winter 2024 edition.
Australia—which has the toughest tobacco control regimes in the world including high taxes and strict prohibitions on the sale of vapes—is viewed as an example of how policy can backfire as illicit products flood the black market and “tobacco turf wars” are created, which in some cases has led to the fire-bombing of shops.
James Martin, a criminologist at Deakin University in Melbourne, said: “The issues that we’ve been dealing with for a long time related to more traditional, hardcore illegal drugs have suddenly become issues for a legal drug.”
Figures from the World Health Organisation rank Australian cigarette prices as the highest in the world, at around $50 for a twenty-pack with taxes accounting for over 65 per cent of the retail price of cigarettes in Australian shops.
An Illicit Tobacco Taskforce formed in 2018 has seen border seizures rise by over 300 per cent and industry figures suggest that illicit sources may now account for nearly a quarter of Australian sales.
The second driver of nicotine black markets is Australia’s restrictive policies on vaping. Since 2008, it has been illegal to purchase nicotine containing e-cigarettes and vapes without a medical prescription to quit smoking.
These measures haven’t stopped people from buying the products and of the 1.8 million vapers in Australia, nine out of 10 of them source vapes illegally, even buying components and importing nicotine liquid from abroad.
Escalation has resulted from the Government doubling-down on its approach, banning imports for personal use and a new bill expected to pass the Australian Senate carries the threat of imprisonment for importing, manufacturing, supplying, or even possessing commercial quantities of vaping goods without authorisation.
Health Minister Mark Butler said penalties will include up to seven years imprisonment and fines of up to $2.2 million.
All of this has an impact upon bp’s mobility and convenience business in Australia.
“There’s a huge black market for cigarettes in Australia. Fortunately, we have largely been left alone from the issue of burglaries and armed robberies, but that is down to a policy of better target-hardening and improving physical barriers around our sites,” said Emily who joined bp eight months ago.
“We have however seen incidents of weapons being used to threaten staff including hammers, knives and even axes—we’ve also had incidents of flying projectiles,” she said.
“Shoplifting and drive-offs were previously problematic but through the roll out of ANPR we have seen a reduction. When a “flagged” vehicle enters the forecourt we can switch the pumps to “pump activation” by card only, and the criminals do not even get out of the cars when they realise.”
bp has a wide range of bp retail site formats in ANZ from unmanned card-only sites to large footprint motorway service areas with overnight parking.
“You see a lot during the graveyard shifts—between two and three in the morning. At the motorway sites our lights are on 24/7 which makes us a magnet for all walks of life, including those that are more vulnerable who may endure unsafe living conditions and domestic violence who come to us for a sense of safety. Our colleagues recognise and help them where possible,” said Emily.
With bp’s focus on customer and colleague safety as the number one priority there are no two days the same across the globe for this retail security leadership team. Adapting to changing market dynamics has sharpened their resolve and fuelled their ambitions to continually make bp safer. All experienced operators with many years of retail and operational experience between them, they recognise that dealing with the public 24/7 is a challenge—but one they embrace.
*Menedez & Cunningham, NIOSH Division of Safety Research
