NEWTON and WALTHAM, MA. The Responsible Retailing Forum (http://rrforum.org) is spearheading a Mystery Shopper Program to foster improved alcohol safety and responsibility for the City of Waltham.

RRForum has conducted the mystery shopper program across the county but Waltham is the first community in this region to undertake the program. The Waltham Alcohol Responsibility Program (Waltham ARP), as it is known, seeks to ensure retailers’ compliance with proper age verification when selling alcohol.

The Waltham ARP provides Waltham alcohol licensees a risk-free mystery shopper program combined with training materials and dissemination of reports on aggregate ID-checking rates for all participants within the community to allow for communication on topical issues of concern.

RRForum sends individuals posing as “regular” consumers, between the ages of 21 and 25, to licensed retailers and alcohol serving establishments to observe whether the establishment and its employees properly check for ID. These mystery shoppers act as a normal shopper would, and once staff correctly check the ID (or do not), they provide staff with on-the-spot feedback, followed by a write up of the interactions and experiences that RRForum sends to the owner-operator. The program provides

participating retailers a rundown of the issues they experienced and their suggestions for correction, while local governments generally opt for “spot-checks” which, when failed, can mean fines or a rescinded alcohol license.