Operators eat losses as more than guests walk out the door

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 10, 2003 by Milford Prewitt

Witnessed in the men's locker room of a New York health club: A man in his 40s in a well-tailored business suit is changing clothes for racquetball when he pulls from his backpack a Waterford crystal pitcher.

He tells a friend a few lockers away that he "took it" from a restaurant.

"What do you mean, 'took it'?" the friend challenges. "You mean you stole it?"

"I wouldn't call it that," the man says, chuckling. "Besides, they're not going to miss it. I'm sure they have a thousand more."

That is one thief s rationalization for committing one of the most annoying and difficult-to-thwart crimes plaguing foodservice operators: guests, often affluent, who steal from restaurants.

While salt and pepper shakers, silverware and saucers have been purloined from restaurants for decades, guest thieves have become more brazenly larcenous over the years, nowadays stealing not only utensils but also lighting fixtures, works of art and other expensive items, like crystal pitchers.

No official estimates have been made quantifying the annual cost to operators for items that walk out of their doors. But anecdotal evidence illustrating the extent of the problem is everywhere, and most operators agree that anything and everything that is not nailed down is subject to vanishing. Sometimes even bolting prized items to walls is no ironclad guarantee they will be safe.

Consider the would-be thief at Tavern on the Green in New York's Central Park who attempted to steal an original 19th century painting titled "Satisfaction" -- also the cover art on the restaurant's dessert menu -- which was bolted to a brick wall.

Allan Kurtz, general manager of the special-occasion restaurant, said the thief had loosened some of the bolts holding the painting before fleeing when a hostess chanced upon the short-circuited larceny.

The painting now is double-bolted.

Danny Meyer, owner of popular Gramercy Tavern in New York, was not so Lucky. A patron disconnected and stole a designer wall sconce from a rest room a few years ago.

Even chefs who have displayed industry awards and honors in high-traffic areas of their restaurants have lost their prizes to pilferers disguised as guests. That's what happened to Claude Guermont, chef-owner of Le Pavilion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Several years ago, as a private party was breaking up and guests were leaving the restaurant, one attendee stole an award Guermont had won for his 1985 book "The Norman Table."

"Some people are just stupid," Guermont says, still fuming over the theft. "It's so amazing. What can they possibly do with it? My name is on it!"

Even though Guermont says he has a good idea who took the award, he never prosecuted the offender.

Given how common and widespread guest theft is, operators say that replenishing items patrons filch is just another cost of doing business -- not unlike the service contract a restaurant maintains for pest and rodent control or removing graffiti.

Joe Slane, a manager at the Atwood Cafe in Chicago's Loop, says the 28-table restaurant loses a couple of pairs of salt-and-pepper shakers each month. The seasoning dispensers, which are ceramic and hand-painted by a California artist with colorful abstract images so that no two look the same, are valued at $60 per pair.

"It's unfortunate when it happens," Slane says, "but we see it as the cost of doing business. It hurts because the restaurant industry is not the most profitable.

"But we just can't seem to find a solution to stop it."

Bruce Cooper, owner of two Philadelphia restaurants, Jake's and Novelty, says he has a solution. He charges his guests when table decorations go missing.

In Cooper's case he agonized over trying to stop the constant theft of the unusual vases his business uses as centerpieces at each table. The vases, though wide enough to hold a bouquet, are actually equipped with an ingeniously concealed tube that permits only one stem flower per vase.

"When servers find them missing at the end of the meal, we put the cost, about $20, on the check," Cooper says, "and they magically reappear."

From what operators, industry leaders and crime experts hear and see, the thieves may be motivated by some misguided sense that they have a right to take items from restaurants.

"It's hard to say what motivates this kind of crime, this kind of people," observes Ray Kavanaugh, chairman of the Department of Restaurant, Hotel, Institutional and Tourism Management at Purdue University. "Is it a broader reflection of the ethics of our society today?

"When it comes to stealing possessions like art or stemware from a restaurant, of course, it's amoral. But I think these people see it as some kind of entitlement."

Kurtz, of Tavern on the Green, more recently had a confrontation with a guest-thief that exemplified Kavanaugh's theory.

Kurtz says the customer acted as if he were doing nothing wrong and in fact grew irate when stopped for attempting to take two China dinner plates, worth about $15 each, out of the restaurant.

Kurtz says the man used two of the plates and napkins to fashion his own doggy bag for a slice of cake from a private party he had attended. From all appearances, Kurtz says, the guest believed that his impromptu form of carryout would not raise a single eyebrow by the staff.