Responsible Retailing through Age Testing

The OCSA is excited to launch an additional step for in-store employee age challenges of youthful customers to insure they don’t make mistakes when it comes to asking for ID for lottery and tobacco and more importantly they conduct one last question to protect themselves.

As an example, employees caught selling tobacco to a mystery shopper are subject to a $490.00 fine. This program benefits all C-Stores, positively reinforcing the message that tobacco or lottery customers who appear to be 25 & under need to be age tested as follows:

‘Be the Best’ program has been designed as a simple way to communicate with our customers and insure you are compliant under the Ontario laws for age testing and verification.

Program Components:

We encourage you to read the 5 steps, communicate with all employees and install the reminder stickers at each cash register.

1 – ‘Be the Best’ employee training card (crack and peel for bulletin boards)

2 – ‘Are you old enough to purchase tobacco/lottery in Ontario today’ for cash register reminders

This program is designed by the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) as part of the We Expect ID age training program and we encourage anyone handling age restricted products to ask the question to make sure no one makes a mistake when reading the authorized ID supplied by your customers.

Quick reminder of age testing expectations:

Ontario Lottery Gaming: – must ask for ID for anyone who appears to be 25 years old or younger (follow the steps of age testing) and only sell to individuals that are 18 years +. Fines and prohibition can be levied on employees and owners.

Tobacco Sales (Smoke Free Act) – must ask for ID for anyone who appears to be 25 or younger (follow the steps of age testing) and only sell to individuals that are 19+ years old. Employees fines and store fines associated with failure in mystery shops.