When Iron Mike’s Grille opened on Chestnut Street in 1997, silverware etched with a caricature of Mike Ditka glistened from the tables. It was all gone six months later, most having strolled out the front door with customers.
At Erwin on Halsted Street, a picture of Elvis that hangs in the ladies powder room has been intercepted trying to leave the building — with customers. Also caught leaving the building with diners? The eatery’s whimsical napkin rings.
At the Everest Room, one of the city’s premier palaces of fine dining, a few of the foot-tall bronze sculptures adorning each table during a special promotion disappeared, presumably in the company of the restaurant’s well-heeled clientele.
Apparently barbecued ribs aren’t the only things causing sticky fingers in America’s restaurants.
Blame a lack of manners, conscience or morals, a false sense of entitlement, or a streak of impudence. Whatever the reason, more than pink packets of Sweet ‘n Low are walking out the front door. While such thefts are far from the leading headache for those running this country’s 831,000 restaurants, it is a persistent problem.
“In surveys, customer thefts from restaurants are not routinely cited by operators as a challenge,” said Kristin Nolt, spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based National Restaurant Association, citing one survey that put finding qualified and motivated labor as the industry’s biggest issues.
“Anecdotally, though, restaurateurs may tell you that it is a frustration and it leaves them no alternative but to pass that (expense) along to customers.”
How badly can filching a $5 beer mug or $18 plate hurt?
“If the average restaurant is doing OK, you make 10 percent on the bottom line. That is, if you have a $100 bill, after expenses you make $10,” explained Rich Melman, whose Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises encompasses more than 70 restaurants. “For two people at a high-class place, it’s $200, and [the restaurant] makes $20. You take a $20 plate, and they make nothing. It’s sort of depressing.”
Such financial indigestion can be just as bad at eateries where the price tag on a meal hovers around $10. According to the NRA’s figures, income before taxes at full-service restaurants with an average check of $10 or more is 4.8 percent. That’s after deducting for food costs (27.4 percent), salaries and wages (29.2 percent), repairs and maintenance (1.7 percent), etc., leaving little once someone pilfers the salt and pepper shakers.
“It is hard in a restaurant to tell the difference between theft and breakage. . . . But [losses are]always higher when you introduce a new silverware pattern, because I guess everyone wants to change theirs at home,” said Gordon Sinclair, who posted off-duty cops at the front and back doors of his eatery when he closed the place at the end of 1999 after 24 years in business.
“For a restaurateur, the biggest losses come from china, glass, silver,” said Pat Bottiglieri, an associate professor of hospitality management at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., noting that those losses include everything from breakage to items tossed in the trash. “That is followed by employee theft, spoilage of food, then customer theft.”
Consider: Decorative touches and pictures are screwed to walls. Artsy napkin rings are removed from tables as soon as customers sit down. Sugar bowls and cream pitchers are brought to the table only after coffee or tea has been ordered.
“We joke about putting a metal detector at the door,” said , who has watched his namesake restaurant’s napkin rings disappear, but is far from surprised. He recalled that when he opened Metropolis Cafe 17 years ago, the restaurant “had hand-painted tiles by a friend who was an artist. They were mounted over each table on the wall. There were a number of times people actually unscrewed the brackets. . . . Finally, we took all the brackets off and cemented the tiles to the wall.”
“By and large, the world is honest,” said Joe Carlucci, whose hospitality group runs a couple of Ditkas restaurants, Strega Nona and Carlucci Rosemont, among others. “But we have had people try to steal the pictures on the walls.”
Of his idea to inscribe silverware at Ditka’s with a logo? “The dumbest thing I ever did.”
Not only do customer thefts hurt a restaurant’s bottom line, but it also ruins the experience for others. Forget putting snazzy pepper grinders on tables. Use standard issue dishes and glasses. Glue memorabilia to the walls.
“Overall, there is less [customer theft] because the industry has recognized it as a problem and made it more difficult,” said consultant Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago based food and restaurant industry consulting firm.
Isidore Kharasch, who heads Hospitality Works, a Lincolnwood-based consulting firm, agreed: “One of the things we do for customers is pick the china, silverware, glassware and, very often, when we’re looking — especially at the price of silverware — one of the first things they say is `Jeez, people are going to steal this.’ So one of the first things we make our decision on is that: Is that something people will steal?”
Exasperated restaurateurs have caught folks sneaking out with vases of flowers or boldly striding towards the exit sign with dinner plates under their arm and bathroom soap dispensers and sink knobs stuffed in satchels.
“You don’t go into a store, buy a suit, and then see something wonderful on the counter and take it, do you?” asked Jean Joho of the Everest Room, two Brasserie Jos (in Chicago and Boston) and the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in Las Vegas. “I guess I understand [snitching] something with a logo, but why take the knob from the toilet?”
“Nothing surprises me [as far as] what they try to get away with,” said Drechsler, who recalled stopping a woman — “She was tipsy,” he said, politely — who was trucking out the front door, Elvis picture in hand. “She kept insisting, `I just wanted to show my friends this picture.'”
Of course this penchant for pilfering is not limited to Chicago.
“I have done buffets in which the chef had [created] a beautiful chocolate carving of an eagle. They stole that in Texas. In Missouri, decorative bottles of wine were stolen,” said the CIA’s Bottiglieri, who remembers watching a 12-foot decorated Christmas tree walk out the door. “Someone came in at 2 or 3 in the morning, and the staff was in the back balancing the day’s books.”
Even in France, in that country’s bastions of culinary excellence, customers who steal and vandalize cause problems. One chef who worked in the kitchens of the much-lauded Auberge de l’Ill in Alsace remembered that the wonderful oriental carpets in the washrooms once disappeared.
Hold on. Before you start pointing your finger at penny-pinching grandmas swiping sugar packets or prank-happy teens bent on kidnapping plastic Big Boy statues, listen to a few irritated restaurateurs describe thieves they have encountered.
“There are people with taste and people without taste,” said Jovan Trboyevic, succinctly classifying many of the culprits.
Trboyevic, who ran the elegant, now-closed Le Perroquet restaurant here for many years, recalled, “We used to have these crystalline figures used as sugar bowls. They were very pretty — a dachshund, frog or bee — and [customers] would be stuffing them in purses and pockets. One judge’s wife — I won’t name names — was stuffing it in her purse and I said, `You know what that is, judge? That is shoplifting.'”
Apparently possessing gobs of money does not necessarily endow one with manners. Nor will it ensure one’s morals are in working order. What gives?
“They view it now more as an entitlement, whereas before they just snatched it,” said Carlucci of current customer attitude. “There is no embarrassment in being caught.”
“I think it is rationalized on the basis that `I’m paying for a meal and therefore if I want the ashtray, I want the ashtray,'” said Paul. Regardless of the motives, it is theft. How that is handled generally depends on the restaurateurs, though Trboyevic said he has seen policies “evolve from being shy to getting tough.”
“We have these plates with characters and a face on it,” says Carlucci. “We regularly see [customers] try to put them in purses and briefcases. We go back to them and say, `I’m sure you forgot to tell your waiter you were taking home the plate, so we put the $65 on your check. About 90 percent of them keep it. They’re too embarrassed.”
“It’s a tough thing. I don’t think it’s a cookie-cutter approach,” said the Culinary Institute’s Bottiglieri. “If it’s a business person and that person is with a group of people, I might pull him aside and say `Could we please have that item back?’ in a very discreet way, not losing sight that we’re still in the hospitality business. I treat it with kid gloves. If it’s an ashtray — forget it. If it’s a silver wine bucket, I’ll call the police.”
“We have, on occasion, pursued people for theft,” said Kharash, recalling an eatery that had salt and pepper grinders painted in several colors. Occasionally, the restaurant manager had to confront guests, though he waited until they had paid their check and left their tip. Then he would stand outside the door and approach the customer and say something along the lines of “Excuse me, somebody at your table took our salt and pepper shakers.”
“They would hold them right there — they had their information from their credit card — and they would ask them to hand it over there or just call the police,” said Kharash. “We probably caught at least two to three tables a month.”
If there is any solace for eateries, perhaps it can be found in the case of the restaurateur peeved because beautiful imported olive oil bottles set on the tables “disappeared at a rate of two or three a night.” His consolation? “Those bottles of olive oil could really mess up a briefcase.”
