On a recent Tuesday, customers walked through the doors of the Mission District’s Grocery Outlet, barely glancing at the generic-looking security camera sitting on the wall to the right of the store’s entrance.
Whether or not they noticed the camera, it was the camera’s job to notice them. By the glass sliding doors was a sign, no larger than the size of a hand, that read “Face Matching software being used for security and safety.”
The system takes images of customers and runs them against a “watchlist,” a database of people who have previously been identified after “causing harm in some way,” said Chris Ochs, who works at SAFR at RealNetworks, the AI company that created SAFR Guard, the security system being used at Grocery Outlet.
If there is a match, a phone notification is sent to the retailer using the system.
SAFR describes itself as “the industry’s first unified facial recognition ecosystem — seamlessly spanning access control, surveillance, and mobile solutions” but with a mission to do so “without compromising personal privacy or data integrity.”
If a customer’s picture doesn’t match a face on the watchlist, said Charisse Jacques, president at SAFR, it is deleted immediately. Individual stores can choose to manually create their own watchlists, or to pool data with other retailers.
“It’s not about mass surveillance,” said Jacques. “It’s about ‘targeted deployment.’”
Grocery Outlet, which is based in Emeryville, has five locations in San Francisco and many more across the Bay Area.
Four of those locations have signs indicating that the store is using SAFR Guard: The Mission, Portola, Bayview and Richmond District locations. At the Grocery Outlet stores in Bayview and Portola, the same sign was printed on a transparent background, making it difficult to read.
It’s unclear how many other Grocery Outlet stores use this technology — the company’s business model involves leasing the stores to independent store operators — or how long individual stores have been doing so.
A spokesperson for Grocery Outlet did not respond to multiple emails requesting a comment. Several employees at the Mission District store declined to comment as well, though one referred this reporter to the small sign by the door.
Facial recognition technology has shown up in businesses elsewhere in San Francisco, and across the country, for years now. Several gay bars in the Castro use a system called Patronscan to identify blacklisted customers.
The software does not appear to violate any of California’s privacy laws, according to Mario Trujillo, a senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights and privacy organization. In some other states, like Illinois, an individual is required to give “affirmative consent” for their biometric information to be taken.
While the California Consumer Privacy Act gives consumers the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of biometric data collected by retailers, they need to contact the company and opt out from that data being shared after it’s gathered.
If a person believes they are on the watchlist and would like their biometric data deleted, they can send an email to SAFR, said Jacques. The sign by the door has a QR linking to SAFR Guard’s privacy policy and contact information.
In 2019, the Board of Supervisors banned the use of facial recognition software by city agencies (with some exceptions), but the ban does not apply to private companies.
At the National Grocers Association’s conference in Las Vegas last February, a panel discussion sponsored by SAFR Guard featured two grocers who described the technology as a boon to their business for how quickly it could identify frequent shoplifters.
“We had the problem that people would just go in there and fill up their shopping cart with, you name it: Tide, baby formula, items that they can resell on the black market, and then just basically felt entitled to them,” Luis Moreno, director of Fiesta Foods, a chain of Hispanic grocery stores in Washington state, told the audience.
After Moreno scanned a collection of photos that he had collected of repeat offenders, he said, and uploaded it to SAFR Guard, he said, the system began to flag incoming customers, and the amount of lost inventory went down.
Moreno did, he continued, have to take a customer out to breakfast after the customer raised concerns about the technology, before successfully coaxing the customer to continue shopping there.
Other rollouts of biometric security systems have not gone so well. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission banned Rite Aid from using facial recognition technology for the next five years, after a system used by the chain repeatedly misidentified some customers as shoplifters.
Studies have found that white men are most likely to be accurately identified by facial recognition systems, while Black women have a disproportionately high rate of being misidentified.
“There are going to be inaccuracies in any face recognition technology,” said Trujillo. “Those inaccuracies are compounded when you are using facial recognition from far away, and it’s not a passport-like photo of the individual, and it’s a quick timeframe.”
Meanwhile, even if a customer can technically opt out of their data being shared, said Lee Hepner, a lawyer with the American Economic Liberties Project, who previously worked on developing San Francisco’s 2019 facial recognition ban, “very few people are going to do that.”
“Grocery Outlet is an affordable grocer that caters to lower-income consumers, who may not have another option,” added Hepner. “There is a coercive element to this data collection, because some people cannot simply choose to not go to the grocery store.”
Crime is generally on a downward trend in California, but reports of shoplifting have risen 48 percent since 2019, according to a 2025 report from the Public Policy Institute of Policy of California — though it cautioned that the rise could also be due to an increase in retailers reporting retail theft after a wave of media coverage of it post-pandemic.
SAFR does not share any data with law enforcement, according to Jacques. The company’s privacy policy indicates that it may disclose personal information to comply with legal requirements like warrants, but Jacques said that this has not yet happened.
“It’s to create a safer environment for both the workers and the shopper,” Jacques said.
On Tuesday, the half a dozen or so shoppers at the Mission District location who spoke to Mission Local had not noticed the sign.
Some seemed unconcerned about the facial recognition.
“I get it,” said Destiny, who had just finished a grocery run for her family. She said she appreciated that the cameras might make shopping more pleasant, she said, by helping retailers keep items out in the open, instead of them being locked behind plastic doors (no items at the Mission Grocery Outlet are currently locked behind doors).
“We like to have a good experience,” she said.
Others were less equivocal. “I’m bothered by that,” said Allan Fisher, after being told about the AI face-matching software.
“I don’t like that,” added Alice York, as she loaded groceries into her car. “That’s without my consent. I’m not coming here again,” York added. “That’s a shame, too.”
“It’s not about mass surveillance.”
Except that it’s about mass surveillance. I’ll never step foot in that store.
Exactly. I’ve noticed an increasing trend of redefining “surveillance” to mean “bad surveillance.” It is mass surveillance regardless of the purposes to which it’s being put, or the intentions of those doing the surveilling. And it shouldn’t be happening without real consent.
Good, less theft for that store!
Well… bye. Name that actor/character!
Being that AI surveillance tools still have strong algorithmic bias, especially for women and people of color, I suppose Grocery Outlet will also need to foot the bill for any lawsuit stemming from mistaken identity.
Like Flock, whose cameras seem to be showing up everywhere in this town, does SAFR sell its data to DHS? DHS is not always considered “law enforcement.”
Is that still true?
I am in this research community, and absolutely yes. No corporation is going to say it, but it still exists.
Time to get out the face masks
First gay bars in the Castro now grocery stores? Enough is enough with this. We need to reply with our business going elsewhere before everyplace uses these bio metric data collectors on us everywhere.
Some businesses use to post photos of customers who wrote bad check or were known shoplifters. While these companies do need to fix the false-positives and post large signs telling customers that they are being recorded, frankly, between video cameras everywhere, GPS tracking on phones, and cookies on laptops, I think a lot of us have given up being anonymous.
Having seen people fill carts with alcohol and big packages of snacks into a cart looking like a normal shopper and then at the last minute run out the doors, I get it. Upwards of $500 in the cart and they come back and do it again days later, it’s hurting not just the store but other shoppers experience.
I would prefer this to having the store, which makes food affordable to the community, have to close. I really appreciate the variety and quality of the products, and being a business owner myself, understand why they are doing this.
Isn’t this a non-story? Private property and they can do as please including but not limited to taking on theft if our supervisors (esp. D9) won’t confront reality?
And of course customers like Alice York can balk and shop elsewhere and she should. Perhaps pressing a button to get something unlocked as simple as toothpaste is her idea of a good consumer experience!
The fact that people are increasingly surveilled and policed for something as simple as buying groceries?
That is a very large story, and it’s disturbing that you are okay with this.
If we had a state assembly that wasn’t hell bent on decriminalizing everything, judges that enforced the laws, or a board of supervisors that did anything, we wouldn’t have to lean on private businesses or technologies to do the work of upholding civic order.
If it keeps the store open and keeps the bad actors away, I’m all for it.
As long as you can easily appeal if you get caught by accident.
Tech like this might have kept the two Walgreen’s in my neighborhood from closing.
Another person who seems to think San Francisco is a mad max crime haven.
This is what happens when the government can’t or won’t stem crime. It’s a sad situation though because it’s yet another symbol of a failed state.
Nonsense. Failed state? GMAB
On the fence to be honest I truly hope it’s for the greater good and not some smoke n mirrors ploy to monitor my shopping habits or general surveillance….just be 💯 and I’ll let you know anything about me. Just don’t front.