About Yau Shing Supermarket
友誠食品平價超市 (Yau Shing Food Wholesale Limited) has rapidly become Hong Kong's most talked-about discount supermarket chain. With 6 strategic locations across the city - from their Cheung Sha Wan headquarters to their newest San Po Kong branch - they've earned the local nickname "窮人恩物" (blessing for the poor).
"With our slim profit margins, every minute our staff spends on non-customer activities directly impacts our bottom line. We needed a solution that would work without human intervention."
The Challenge: Manual CCTV Management
Yau Shing's Kwai Fong flagship store faced a critical operational challenge. Frequent shoplifting incidents and regular law enforcement requests for CCTV footage were consuming valuable staff hours. Employees had to:
- Manually search through hours of CCTV recordings
- Identify and extract relevant incidents
- Convert footage into police-compatible formats
- Manage and organize clips for evidence
This manual process diverted staff from customer service and store operations, cutting into already slim retail margins and impacting the customer experience that made Yau Shing successful.
The Solution: AI-Powered Automation
Recognizing these inefficiencies, Yau Shing's management agreed to pilot Aculor's AI theft detection system at their Kwai Fong location. The system offered three key capabilities:
Continuous Monitoring
AI analyzes video streams 24/7 without human intervention
Instant Clip Generation
Automatically extracts and saves relevant incident footage
Law Enforcement Ready
Footage pre-formatted for immediate police use
Results: From Pilot to Chain-Wide Deployment
The one-month pilot at Kwai Fong delivered immediate, measurable results:
- Zero manual review: All theft incidents detected automatically
- Instant evidence: Police requests fulfilled immediately
- Staff liberation: Employees returned to customer-facing roles
- Cost reduction: Eliminated overtime for footage review
Based on these results, Yau Shing approved expanding the AI system to all six store locations. The rollout will standardize theft detection across the chain while significantly reducing operational costs related to security management.