Security cameras are designed to capture what happens inside a store. But for grocery teams dealing with loss, recording an incident is only part of the challenge. The real value comes from being able to identify suspicious activity while there is still an opportunity to respond.

For Amish Market in New York City, that distinction became central to its approach to loss prevention.

With Spacture AI, the grocery store transformed its existing CCTV infrastructure into a source of real-time intelligence. The deployment went live in just seven days, giving the team faster access to suspicious activity and a more efficient way to investigate incidents. Since implementation, store management has reported a 43% reduction in shrink and an 11% increase in sales.

Turning Existing Cameras into an Active Resource

Amish Market already had cameras throughout its store. However, traditional video surveillance presented a fundamental limitation: footage was useful for understanding what had happened, but it offered limited help in identifying incidents as they unfolded.

Investigating an incident could mean spending hours reviewing recorded video. This placed additional demands on the team and made timely intervention more difficult.

Rather than replacing its existing infrastructure, Amish Market took a different approach. Spacture AI integrated with the store’s current CCTV feeds, adding AI-powered detection and real-time alerts without requiring new cameras or a hardware retrofit.

The goal was to make the existing system more useful to the people responsible for protecting the store.

A Different Way to Work with Security Footage

With Spacture AI in place, the team gained a more direct way to identify and investigate relevant activity.

Instead of relying entirely on retrospective video reviews, staff could receive alerts while suspicious activity was taking place. When an incident needed further investigation, a visual timeline made it easier to find the relevant footage without searching through hours of recordings.

The platform also helped the team identify recurring activity patterns and review foot traffic alongside sales data.

Together, these capabilities changed how the store could use its existing surveillance infrastructure. Cameras were no longer limited to documenting incidents. They became a more actionable resource for day-to-day loss prevention.

A Seven-Day Deployment, Supported by Ongoing Reviews

The transition from the initial kickoff call to live alerts took just one week.

Following implementation, Spacture AI and the Amish Market team continued working together through monthly on-site reviews. These sessions helped keep the system aligned with the store’s operating environment and day-to-day requirements.

The rollout combined a short implementation period with continued attention to how the technology performed in practice.

The Impact on the Store

The most important change was the team’s ability to identify suspicious activity sooner and spend less time locating incidents in recorded footage.

According to Amish Market store management, the results following implementation included:

43% reduction in shrink

11% increase in store sales

These figures were reported by Amish Market management. They represent the store’s reported outcomes following deployment and should not be interpreted as independently verified results or as proof that the technology alone caused both changes.

For store manager Tuncer Uygun, the improved ability to identify previously missed shoplifting activity stood out.

A Practical Lesson for Grocery Retailers

Amish Market’s experience illustrates a practical opportunity for grocery operators: improving loss prevention does not necessarily require replacing an entire camera system.

By adding AI-powered detection to its existing infrastructure, the store gained real-time alerts, a faster way to locate relevant footage, and additional insights into store activity.

For retailers looking to get more value from their current security investments, the opportunity is to move beyond simply recording incidents and give teams better information to act on.