Heron Foods rolls out live facial recognition to curb retail crime

The discount grocery chain, which operates across Northern England, the Midlands, and Wales, intends to use the software to alert store teams the moment a flagged individual enters their premises. By automating the identification of known offenders, Heron Foods joins a growing list of UK retailers adopting AI tools to manage in-store security and improve shopping environments.

This expansion follows a notable trial by Sainsbury’s, which plans to deploy the same software in over 150 locations by year-end. While Sainsbury’s reported that their implementation successfully deterred nine out of ten repeat offenders, the technology has faced scrutiny regarding accuracy. Earlier this year, a customer at an Elephant and Castle store was wrongly approached by staff after a system error. Sainsbury’s attributed the incident to human mistake rather than a technical failure of the Facewatch platform, maintaining that the software itself has not misidentified any individuals to date.