LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 207 Ft. Scott Ziter (Northeast Shared Services)

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, the team welcomes Scott Ziter, an experienced leader in loss prevention and safety operations. Scott shares insights from his extensive career in the retail sector, including his current role overseeing asset protection for Northeast Shared Services. The discussion explores evolving challenges in retail crime, the importance of collaboration, and innovative approaches to safety and loss prevention. Listeners will gain valuable perspectives on fostering partnerships and enhancing security in today’s complex retail environment.

Hi everyone and welcome to crime science in this podcast. We explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Good afternoon everyone. I'm here with Scott Zider, the VP at Northeast Grocery. Scott Zider, the VP at Northeast Grocery. So Scott, how are you today? Great, how are you doing today, Clark? I'm doing very well. It's very good having you on the podcast. For those of you who do not know, Scott is the chair of the Board of Advisors here at the LPRC.

And he was just recently honored as one of the LPRC fellows, which is a very exclusive recognition for those who have been most involved at the LPRC and because of their involvement have been extremely important in the success to the LPRC. So I just want to start off by asking you, Scott, can you can you kind of tell us a little bit about your background in the industry? And what you brought into what brought you into the laws prevention and asset protection? Sure. Yeah. So as you mentioned, Corey, I'm the vice president of Northeast Grocery. a company that owns Price Chopper Market 32 up in the Schenectady, Albany, New York area and Tops Markets, which is out in Buffalo. We're a combined company of almost 280 stores.

And we, my area of risk management overseas, asset protection, food safety, occupational safety, have internal audit compliance, and risk and insurance services. I also oversee the business continuity and crisis management area for Northeast Grocery and have a great team of leaders that ultimately oversee the respective areas. But my career started back in 1991. I was in college going to school for criminal justice and psychology. Really at first was looking to become a police officer. And then when I got into the psychology piece of it, I really enjoyed the counseling component of criminology and did some internships and different correctional facilities.

But during that whole time, I was working through college as a part-time store detective at a company called Stop and Shop Supermarkets up in New England area. And as I graduated, there were some opportunities that came up at Stop and Shop and also in a correctional facility

and ultimately made the decision to stay in the private sector and began my career at Stop and Shop, which then escalated through Stop and Shop and his parent company, Ahold USA, and held positions of increasing responsibility up to the vice president of asset protection for Ahold USA. And in 2014, ended up having an opportunity to join Gola Corporation, which was the former owner of Price Shopper Supermarket Company and worked, have been working with them since 2014.

And as I mentioned with Northeast Grocery, there was a merger that took place in 2021, and I took on more responsibilities for Northeast Grocery and providing the support and up the different areas which I've become much more familiar with. You know over the past several years in this role. Fantastic thank you. That's a pretty extensive background. That's one of the things I like most about LP is and I think it's still true today as it was for you throughout your career that someone can enter the profession and move from, I mean, all the way through the ranks to become VP. It's pretty amazing industry in those regards. You know, at the LPRC, we're really focused on the science of loss prevention and improving

the way that things are done. You're involved heavily with the LPRC, so I'm really interested in hearing, you know, how do you incorporate research and evidence-based practices into what you're doing at Northeast Grocery? Yeah, Northeast Grocery, I mean, most of the research and evidence-based practices are, you know, incorporated into asset protection-related decisions. However, there are many times when it applies to all the areas of our risk management department, but our AP technology team is consistently

researching new technologies that are out in the market and decisions made to test the product. If we feel that it was the right thing to do, we'll put it into our lab. And then, you know, if we want to proceed with it, we'll move it into like a small store pilot. And then in many cases, not all, we will then, you know, it leads to a rollout,

if the ROI makes sense. And we've done that with several different technologies between both companies. But we've also used, when you look at research and data, and it's just been a benefit from being part of LPRC to look at how the different areas being part of LPRC to look at how the different areas are really similar in risk management to asset protection. Like we used research and data when, you know,

updating what is our now threat response program. It's a unified program. It was implemented by our manager of crisis management, Natalie Fisher. And we worked with our workplace violence business partner and evaluated different options to ensure that we were rolling out a unified, consistent program to both operating companies. And research and data was shared during the training of the threat response teams to the threat response teams and also to company associates throughout both operating companies.

And you know, again, the experimentation, you know, typically takes place in the AP technology area. You know, Mike Gulley, who oversees the asset protection technology and corporate security, he and his team, continually evaluate the technologies and other solutions to see how they work as either a standalone system or how they integrate with existing systems because that is so important today. And it's just an ongoing process and researching data

and prior results and evaluating how technology would fit in in our business is always a priority of my team and just the you know the partnership with LPRC and and what what we've seen that this group put out there is help us in these areas specific to Northeast Grocery.

Excellent. And you do have a fantastic team. I've had many chances to work with Mr. Mike Gulley. And he's always a player to work with as well. I really create a team. Just don't tell them he's fantastic. Don't tell them. OK, yeah.

Don't want to get him in the big head. So you're doing a lot. It's at Northeast. There's a lot of opportunities for innovation in AP and LP. You know, where do you see some of those the greatest untapped opportunities in our field? What do you think those are these days? Yeah, I think that right now I feel the biggest opportunity and really disguise the limit with is computer

vision. You know computer vision will change the retail industry regardless from a you know asset protection loss prevention perspective to you know operations merchandising and you know it's fairly new compared to like some other key other topics and other initiatives over the years in our industry. But as we know, computer vision will continue to rely heavily on AI and machine learning. There are so many algorithms that can be built to provide security and other areas of the retail industry with the data to make the right decisions for their business. So I really believe it's still untapped.

You're going to continue to hear about computer vision and you're only going to see enhancements to the overall computer vision and AI. And it will continue to shape the industry, I mean, for years to come. Yeah, one of the things I appreciate about our conversations that we get to have is that you have a very broad mandate. I mean, since you're on the risk management side,

and you have a, there's a lot of responsibilities that you have, but I think that you think more broadly about some of the challenges and how different technologies and different strategies have implications throughout the business beyond just security. So, let's just go into that space real quick. How do you see APLP technologies being leveraged more by other business partners?

Anything there that is particularly exciting to you there? Yeah, I mean, with computer vision, with other technologies as simple as our cameras, assisting our claims department, I oversee the workers' comp and GL team as well, how they utilize the cameras to investigate cases, looking at merchandising, trying to get different patterns of customer shopping habits. If you stay up to date with the technologies and you start testing the different enhanced technologies in your business, it's something that's very important with that is to make sure that other areas of the business see what you're proposing and how they could benefit from the technologies, which in many cases,

as we know, is costly. But getting buying and getting partnerships and sharing the value of the specific technologies can only help an asset protection leader, you know, get the funds needed to bring in technology that not only would help their specific area, but also other businesses, other business areas within the company. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for that. I couldn't agree more. That kind of brings us to another question I wanted to talk about, which is barriers to innovation. What are the barriers to innovation? One of the most common ones that I hear is establishing the ROI, and that's why I oftentimes ask, okay, what are the other applications for this technology? If you want to deploy technology

or personnel or anything else, you always want to squeeze as much value out of that addition to your program as possible. So that's one of the key barriers, building up the ROI and getting value out of that tech ad. But what are some of the other barriers to innovation that you see? What are some of the greatest ones that you see in your position today? Yeah, and to your point, Corey, I mean, obviously cost is always a barrier, but I look at cost not only from the perspective of the retail component of it, you know, in our business and what we're trying to seek funding for,

but it's also, it could be a barrier to solution providers, right? Because they need to decide if a new product, right, will be accepted by the end user, which in this scenario, right? Because they need to decide if a new product, right, will be accepted by the end user, which in this scenario, right, think of the retailer, and whether or not it will be cost prohibitive, right? So even before the product comes out, you know,

they have to, you know, solution providers are always looking at, you know, will be accepted in the industry. And, you know, after all their testing and the different functions that they go through when making decisions what to release. But then going back to the cost piece of it, right? There's only so much money available for asset protection capital projects.

And people depending on who's listening to this, you may not be involved directly with getting those funds, but you're sharing funds with what is most likely an established capital plan that the asset protection is just one small component. When you tie it in with remodels, new stores, merchandising, maintenance repairs. So that's always something that we look at when we

get an idea of what type of funding we'll have for the upcoming fiscal year. Other challenges with innovation are quite honestly the resistance to change. And it could even be within an asset protection team. Lack of resources, right, to manage a particular project or a pilot and does, quite frankly, does the asset protection loss prevention leader, you know, do they have a clear vision for the future of their department and how to support the business? And, you know, sometimes we can get set in our ways where yeah we don't need this technology and then next thing you know your years behind what you know other colleagues in the industry have put out you know to support their business and you know you have to work

through the resistance you know by being a you know a champion of change and pushing your beliefs and vision to senior leadership and finding a new product or solution that can help other areas of the business as I mentioned is especially important. But, and then quite honestly, a strong ROI that always helps your case, right? If leadership sees that and again, it can benefit other areas of the business, you are much more likely to get buy-in

and support and approval. Yeah, you mentioned that you rely on shared funding, right? I think also oftentimes you also have shared resources. I know retailers often share IT resources and if there's a responsibility that IT has for managing a POS system or something that actually helps make sales, sometimes that is oftentimes, let's just be honest here,

that is prioritized over some other things. So that can be a challenge. Yeah, there's new technologies you wanna test that you believe in that you learn that, okay, on the front end, they're gonna be putting in a brand new POS system in the next 18 months, right? So you're not gonna go invest funds

in the asset protection technology that could help on the front end when it comes to self-checkout concerns, theft, fraud, but it's going to go in the back burner until the actual change is made to change your POS system. Yeah, that's definitely. Another thing that you mentioned, and this kind of thing brings us to some leadership issues, but you just mentioned communicating that that tech vision and tech strategy to your team so they understand and you can get buy in for that. You know that was in the context of resistance to

change. You have to get those key players on your team to move with you and understand why you want to go that direction. You know. Let's talk about leadership. What is the leadership skill that you believe is undervalued in LPAP risk management, but that you think has made a significant difference in your success as a leader? I've been in a leadership role for most of my career. And I always look at my management style, right? And my leadership skillsets and the overall mindset.

And quite honestly, the biggest piece to any success that I've had is surrounding myself with a great team, right? Allowing them to feel comfortable, you know, with making their decisions, right? Do not micromanage, right? There's a lot going on and if anybody thinks that they can take it all on and, you know, oversee everything regardless of what level you're in in supervision. You have to give your team the opportunity to make decisions and quite honestly, not feel afraid to fail, right? And if you do fail for some reason,

how do you get back up and make adjustments and make the right decision? Developing strong relationships with other key business leaders in my company over throughout my career has been very important. And collaborating and brainstorming with other retail and industry association colleagues. This podcast, the conversations we have with LPRC, with FMI and others, right? That only helps the business, because I feel strongly, and I believe it's a fact, that in the asset protection and loss prevention world, there really is no competitors, right?

There's topics that we're all addressing, issues we're all facing, that we can help each other without, you know, getting into what's the typical, you know, we don't want to share secrets about merchandising or our sales strategy, you know, so that collaborating with industry colleagues is very important. So, you know, overall mindset is to, you know, surround yourself with good people, partner with others in the area. It's just not asset protection and really collaborate and partner with your business colleagues.

Fantastic. That's that, it tells us a lot about your leadership style saying, you know, you have to be willing to delegate things and give other people the opportunity to be leaders. And if they fail or make mistakes to grow from that. You know, that says a lot about your leadership style and how you approach, you know, coaching and mentorship. But, you know, how else do you coach or mentor you know future leaders within your company?

Yeah, so we in both companies that I've spent my career in regard if it was a hold now, you know Northeast grocery. You know working throughout the performance appraisal process, right? The successional process, right? The succession planning process, identifying the high potential individuals in every position, never looking at, you know, you're just worried about who's going to get to the district level or regional because the mentorship begins with whatever, you know, entry level positions are, right?

Store detective, asset protection leads or managers, but giving this group and others, but again, we're looking at the future leaders providing clear and concise goals, right, during the performance appraisal process is very important. You know, the respective manager should develop a plan You know, the respective manager should develop a plan for his or her individuals to get them to the next level in their career path. And you know, you said the word mentor. There's really not more of an important word or title position than that when it comes to the growth of some of our high potential candidates.

One of the most important ways to help others grow is to be the best mentor possible. I always believe that. Seeing people that have worked at my organizations advance their careers, and there's nothing that's more rewarding than seeing that. Introduce high potential associates to other business leaders, right?

Giving them the opportunity to gain experience in different areas of the business is very important. And allowing these individuals to get involved in the different industry associations such as LPRC, right? Giving them the opportunity to collaborate and network with others is very important. There's a lot of orcas out there, right? Giving them the opportunity to collaborate and network with others is very important. You know, there's a lot of orcas out there, right? When you're looking at organized retail crime, that's how people at the entry level or field level positions are able to

learn more about their position, about the industry. And then, you know, making sure our leadership team is teaching future leaders everything they can do and equipping them with the tools they need to be successful in their careers and really be ready when the torches pass on to them right. The asset protection LP industry is there's a lot of people that are you know 20, 20, 25, 30 years, right? What are you doing to set your company up for success when you move on, right? It be retirement or another company and that's very important, but that's important through the entire, you know, APLP leadership team. Yes, and that's something that we try to do at the LPRC is one of the things I love most about the impact conferences that we try

to get people across the organizational spectrum. Our hierarchy into our conference so that they can get exposed to that and we're going to be doing more of that in the coming year. Not only there, but also other events that at a regional basis. So one of the things we're also doing is starting this operational excellence working group and a key part of that is you know how do you do a better job of leading a team to improve operational efficiencies and also manage some of those operational sources of shrink. So a ton of that going on with the LPRC. And I'm really looking forward to seeing where we go

with more of that. You mentioned collaboration with other retailers through the LPRC and through other organizations like FMI, a great partner of the LPRC. How else has that impacted your worker outlook beyond some of the things that we've already talked about? Is there anything else that these types of organizations have helped you to achieve in your career?

Yeah, I mean, so one thing that always comes to mind when I look at LPRC, right, and I have been my organization, you know, that I know it now, we've been members of LPRC for 11 years, began the partnership and relationship as I was leaving my prior company, you know, coming into Price Chopper, now Northeast Grocery. And, you know, one of the most important tools that I to this day, appreciate from LPRC is really the zones of influence. And if you think about it from a leader's perspective, this tool has been very helpful for me and the overall asset protection team over the years. We use the zones. And you may not be calling out the

zones every time you're presenting or you're talking to your colleagues in your direct reports, but we use the zones to find where are the areas of opportunity or whether if it's specific to a store, a distribution center, right? Or a corporate office, right? They can be used to focus on theft. It can be used to focus on workplace violence and other areas of the business. And when you look at the five zones, right, from the interior points, all the way out

to the community context, social media, or vice versa, right? If you're picturing coming into the store and there's an event that took place that was reported out from the social media that was then led into a specific incident at a store. The information provided, the tools that are needed in each of these zones of influence through LPRC has been invaluable. It's been, it's helped us, it's helped us with, you know, again, from an ORC standpoint

and how you prepare for, you know, workplace violence training, what are the key areas to focus on, you know, for your store teams or distribution teams. But, you know, LPRC overall, you know, those that they tie into the bow tie model, but LPRC overall does an excellent job fostering innovation. You just think about how LPRC has matured over the years. Innovation, research, evidence-based practice continue to be at the core of quite frankly why LPRC is 25 years strong and growing. It offers so much to its members that I pushed that information. I share that with our AP team

and to get to approval to go to different conferences or integrate or innovate. And it offers things, the working groups, the innovation lab, the continuous offer to come down to Gainesville and then the famous impact conference. So it's not a secret as to why our membership is growing in both retailer and solution provider categories. Continue to have record attendance numbers at the Impact Conference.

And I think the overall thing that if you look at in a high level definition of LPRC is that, you know, you provide evidence and fact-based research and data that helps leaders, right, to prove their case when looking to, you know, for support from the business for their initiatives or funding for technology. So you know, I you know it's that's what I feel strongly about if you know with with the LPRC partnership and you know where we've grown over our 11 years as being a member with you all. Thank you, I couldn't agree more. I think the I would summarize

the LPRC as a community community dedicated to learning how to improve what everyone's doing. Yeah, that's one of the things I love most about it. I think that's bringing us toward the end of the interview today. The last question I'd like to ask and kind of takes us back to where we started. Is that? The last question I'd like to ask and kind of takes us back to where we started was that. You know, this is a profession where you can start right out of college and rise through the ranks to lead an entire program. What what advice would you give to someone entering the field with a passion for science and innovation to help them become

the best leader that they can be, you know, going forward. Yeah, it would be to learn everything you can about this field. And there's a lot, right? You know, I mentioned earlier on, you know, find a mentor. And if you know you're still interested in staying in this industry, right? Learn as much as you can about the other key areas of the industry,

regardless of it's, you know, supermarket's been my career, big box, pharmacy, you know, learn the different areas of operations and warehousing and merchandising and, you know, learn the different areas of operations and warehousing and merchandising and, you know, legal and the partnership with HR. And if your passion still, right, you might, you know, if you look at innovation and research and stuff like that, if your passion is to really stay in technology and innovation, right, Become involved in industry associations, right? Engage with solution providers

and be a champion of change. Because as I mentioned, advancements in technology are ever changing, right? Networking and collaboration, you should view as being absolutely critical to the success of yourself, of wherever you wanna bring your career path to. And I believe in building strong relationships

with the other ARIES. I've mentioned that over my 34 years, not only in asset protection, but providing the relationships with others is providing me with the opportunity to assume responsibilities of the areas I mentioned in the beginning of this podcast. I would have never thought 10, 11 years ago coming in there or even in my prior company

that I would have ultimate responsibility of an insurance department or food safety and things like that, right? But it just, it's, it's, it's my, you know, my personal belief is it comes with, you know, the, the, the relationships that I built and the, and the confidence and, and trust that others had for, for Scott Zider to take on different areas, right? So you, you can do that. It may not just be, you know, asset protection, you know, being the chairman of the BOA right one one could argue that I'm biased but seriously I believe that being part of LPRC for 11 years has helped me in in my career right. The the membership is offered a lot not only to me but you know most importantly to the members on

my team. You know we I was joked with because I got the fellow award and there was other different working group awards, but one of the most important things that I took out of impact for my team was being recognized as having the most attendees in the working group sessions, right? And that's not just, hey, just here, you know, you guys all need to join us. I go through it with my leadership team every year

to say who would like to participate in this? Would you like to switch working groups? But at the end result is really to give everybody the opportunity to gain value like the typical leader, the leaders that typically just get to see the value of an association. So, and then, you know, I, you know, above and beyond a advice to a new person, I would encourage other retailers that may not be members to explore the opportunities

that come with, you know, an LPRC membership and or any other association that you want to pursue because there are many of them and at the end of the day it will really help you in your in your career path. Well, thank you that you actually made. You made the end of this super easy for me because I wanted to wrap on the fact that y'all were honored at at impact for having such great attendance and so many of the working groups. As a matter of fact. But ultimately we we we honored you with the fellow award

because of everything that you do to make the LPRC such a great organization. We could not do it without people like you. Of course, you are the chair of the board of advisors, so you have a little bit more ability to influence things around here. But it truly is a community, and we can only be successful because of people like you. So Scott, thank you for everything you do within our community

to make it better every single year and every single week and month. Thank you for this interview today. Thank you everyone for listening in today. My name is Corey Lowe, the Director of Research, and I've been joined by Scott Seider, VP of Risk over at Northeast Grocery. Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more Crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not

reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.