Can your retailers really tell who's underage?
An interactive age-guessing exercise that proves to your retail staff just how difficult it is to verify a customer's age by appearance alone — and why asking for ID is non-negotiable.
✅ Short and concise, ~5 min to complete
✅ Mobile-first, works on any device
✅ White-label your branding
"Sustainable Interaction delivered a tailored Guess the Age solution that fits seamlessly into our sales representatives' daily workflow. The multilingual setup, branded interface, and built-in tracking were exactly what we needed. The collaboration was smooth, professional and very fast from start to finish."
—Markus Fischer,Head of Sales & Marketing
🧑
Actual age: 17
Looks 22
Most guess wrong
🧑
Actual age: 27
Looks 27
Easy to tell
🧔
Actual age: 19
Looks 25
Borderline
🧑🦱
Actual age: 20
Looks 16
Tricky either way
👱♀️
Actual age: 15
Looks 20
Most guess wrong
👨
Actual age: 34
Looks 30+
Easy to tell
Guessing age is harder than your retailers think
Research shows that people who start gambling at a young age are two to four times more likely to develop gambling problems as adults. That's why age limits exist and why enforcing them matters.
But most retail staff overestimate their ability to judge someone's age by appearance. They assume they can tell. They often can't.
Traditional mystery shopping programmes catch this, but they're expensive, infrequent, and only test a handful of staff at a time. What if you could prove the point to every single retailer in your network, digitally, in five minutes?
Five minutes that change behaviour
A simple, engaging exercise that creates a genuine
"aha moment" for retailers.
1. Retailer logs in
Retailer enter their Point of Sale number and agent ID. Branded to your organisation — it looks and feels like your platform.
2. Guess the age
Photos of people appear one by one. For each, the retailer answers: "Is this person over the age limit?" Simple yes or no.
3. Instant feedback
After each guess, the person's real age is revealed. Correct answers are confirmed. Wrong answers create the learning moment.
4. Results and takeaway
A final score shows how many they got right — and reinforces the message: when in doubt, always ask for ID.
Built for scale, built for compliance
A five-minute exercise for the retailer. A robust, auditable training system for you.
Randomised, balanced, and different every time
Each session draws from a curated photo database of faces — men and women across a range of ages deliberately chosen around the age limit boundary.
A randomisation engine selects 6-8 faces per session, ensuring a balanced mix of genders, ages above and below the threshold, and borderline cases that make the exercise genuinely challenging.
No two sessions are identical. If a retailer repeats the exercise — as a refresher or after getting a low score — they'll face a different set of faces. This prevents memorisation and keeps the learning genuine.
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50+ curated faces, male and female, diverse age range around the legal threshold
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6-8 randomised faces, balanced by gender and difficulty
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Configurable per jurisdiction (18+, 19+, 21+, 25+)
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~5 minutes average
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Web-based, responsive. Works on smartphone, tablet, desktop. No app required.
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Secure login via Point of Sale number + agent ID. HTTPS encrypted. GDPR compliant.
Full visibility from head office to individual retailer
Your administration dashboard gives you insight into who has completed the exercise, where, and how they performed — down to the individual point of sale.
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See which locations have completed the exercise and which haven't
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Which staff members are associated with each POS, their scores, and completion dates
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Identify locations or regions where scores are consistently low and that may need additional support
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Prompt staff who haven't completed the exercise, with configurable reminder schedules
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Generate audit-ready documentation for regulators, showing network-wide training evidence
Easy rollout across your network.
Your account managers and retail coordinators can distribute the exercise to their points of sale with a simple link — no IT integration, no installations, no training-the-trainer required.
A digital mystery shopper — at a fraction of the cost
Traditional mystery shopping visits test one retailer at one moment. This trains every single staff member, on-demand, with measurable results.
Dramatically lower cost than mystery shopping
No site visits, no actors, no travel costs. Scale to your entire network for the price of a handful of mystery shops.
100% coverage, not a sample
Every staff member at every point of sale completes the exercise. No one is missed.
The "aha moment" that sticks
Being wrong is a more powerful teacher than being told. Staff remember the exercise because they experienced it — not because they read a policy document.
Repeatable as a refresher
Run it quarterly or annually to maintain awareness. New photo sets keep it fresh. Results tracked over time.
How it compares
Mystery shopping
€€€ per visit
Tests 1 staff member per visit
1-2 times per year
Results in weeks
Hard to scale
Guess the age
Flat fee, entire network
Every staff member, every POS
Anytime, on-demand
Instant reporting
Scales to 10,000+ retailers
This doesn't replace mystery shopping — it complements it at scale.
MODULAR TRAINING
Start with the core.
Add what you need.
The Guess the Age exercise works as a standalone module. But for organisations that want deeper coverage, add scenario-based modules that tackle the situations your retailers actually face.
CORE MODULE
Guess the Age — Interactive Exercise
The standalone age-guessing challenge. Instant feedback, final score with key message reinforcement. White-labelled to your brand. ~5 minutes to complete. Works on any device.
ADD ON
Age verification scenarios
Interactive video scenarios covering real situations: a teenager trying to redeem a winning ticket without ID, a young person claiming they bought a ticket yesterday, handling pushback when you ask for identification.
ADD ON
Peer pressure and group dynamics
When a group of young people enters and one is clearly underage. How to enforce the policy when there's social pressure — without creating conflict or embarrassment.
ADD ON
Parents buying for children
How to handle it when a parent wants to buy a scratch ticket for their child. Teaches retailers to educate — not confront — using the right tone and the right facts about why age limits exist.
ADD ON
Policy and regulation briefing
A short module covering your specific jurisdiction's age limits, ID requirements, escalation procedures, and consequences of non-compliance. Customised to your regulatory framework.
Every completion is logged by point of sale and individual user. You can demonstrate to regulators that your entire retail network has been actively trained on age verification — not just told about it.
✅ Completion tracked per point of sale
✅ Score data reveals which locations may need additional support
✅ Exportable reports for regulatory audits and licence applications
✅ Complements mystery shopping with continuous, network-wide evidence
✅ Adaptable to any jurisdiction's age threshold (18+, 19+, 21+)
Documented proof that your network is trained
Simple to deploy, easy to manage
White-label branding
Your logo, your colours, your platform. Retailers see it as coming from you, not a third party.
Any device, no app
Runs in the browser on smartphones, tablets, and desktops. No downloads or installations required.
Multi-language
Available in English, German, French, Swedish, and more. Age threshold configurable per jurisdiction.
TRY IT
See the exercise in action
Try the Guess the Age module yourself. Request a demo account and experience how a five-minute exercise can permanently shift your retailers' approach to ID verification.