Thursday, March 04, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

TO CATCH A THIEF: Pilfering Patrons

Some diners just can't walk out of a restaurant without taking a souvenir

Click above for enlarged image. Illustration by David Stroud.

As a longtime Las Vegas chef and owner of three restaurants, Gustav Mauler knows that a certain amount of pilfering by customers is just one of the costs of doing business. But even he seems a little surprised by this:

"We have these wonderful oil-and-vinegar vessels on the table" at Spiedini at the JW Marriott, he said. "They look gorgeous.

"People empty them into the glasses, and put them in their pocketbooks."

A little messy, no? So they try to reduce the mess by wrapping the cruet in one of the restaurant's linen napkins -- stealing that as well.

Across the valley, as across the nation, it seems that restaurant guests are not shy about walking off with a little souvenir of their dinners -- souvenirs not from the restaurant's gift shop, but from its dining room.

"From Sweet 'N Low to knives and forks, all kinds of stuff disappears," Mauler said. "People empty the sugar bowls. It's just amazing what some people get a kick out of when they go to a restaurant. I don't know. Do they go picnicking the next day or what?"

Most of the pilfering is of small items that can be easily tucked into a pocket or purse. But sometimes the thefts are a little more dramatic. In a story a few years ago in the now-defunct Restaurants USA, which was the magazine of the National Restaurant Association, a Pennsylvania restaurateur recounted the sudden, mid-dinner-hour disappearance of a 20-inch antique mirror, and recalled catching a departing patron waiting for her car with one of the restaurant's Persian rugs rolled up at her feet.

"It's unfortunate that these types of incidents happen," Katharine Kim, a spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association, said in a decided bit of understatement.

Mary Jane Jarvis, co-owner of Andre's French Restaurant, Andre's at the Monte Carlo and Alize at the Palms, was a little more straightforward.

"I don't get it, because they wouldn't come into your home and do that," Jarvis said. "I think they feel entitled because they've spent money with you."

But the offenders would no doubt view their actions a little differently were they in a retail store.

"You know that's shoplifting," Jarvis said. "It's shoplifting in our place, too."

David Robins, corporate executive chef and managing partner with the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group in Las Vegas, agreed that the practice is widespread.

"It's a problem in the sense that it ends up costing us a small amount a month," Robins said. "Replacement of ashtrays and glassware and salt-and-pepper shakers is a continuous process. I think that kleptomania runs pretty predominantly in our society. I think people feel that they're getting away with something."

Robins and others said logo-bearing items disappear most often, because they're tangible souvenirs of an evening out. But that doesn't explain the table and four chairs that were taken from the patio at Spiedini.

"The hotel had them on tape, but couldn't identify the license plate," Mauler said.

Tamir Shanel, director of food and beverage at the Four Seasons, can top that. His former boss was the general manager of the Royal Horse Guards Hotel in London when a $60,000 grand piano vanished from the lobby.

"It was a truck with four guys, with `piano moving' on the truckü" Shanel said. "The guys were dressed in overalls. They walked through the door, told the bellman, `We're just picking up the grand piano for repair.' No problem. They picked up the piano, put it in the truck and left. That was the last that anybody saw of the piano."

Jarvis said Alize once temporarily lost an armchair, which disappeared from a spot near the elevator bank. It was found on another floor at the Palms.

But most of the time, the items taken are small.

"No. 1 is the demitasse, the smallest spoon," said Julian Serrano, executive chef at Picasso at the Bellagio. "They're stolen all the time.

"Another thing is, we don't put salt and pepper on the table" unless it's requested. "We have cute, very small salt and peppers. They disappear, too."

Sugar tongs, too.

"These particular items fly," Serrano said.

"Two items do get stolen quite often," said Tanya Tumminia, marketing and publicity manager for the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. "One of them is our Bayou Hot Sauce. Another is our candles, which sell for $13.50 in our retail stores. They are pretty cool House of Blues candles."

"We had a Versace base plate stolen," Jarvis said. "We caught him on camera trying to put it under his jacket. We had to have security go get him. They brought it back."

Jarvis said she, too, doesn't put salt and pepper shakers on the table.

"Caviar shells and caviar spoons, because they're made of mother of pearl -- we keep those under lock and key," she said. "Those are disappearing like crazy."

"My biggest pet peeve is when people take the flowers," she said. "What do they do? They put it behind their ear and they go outside and they throw it down."

Jarvis remembers being in Aureole at Mandalay Bay with a friend when she saw another customer lift a big arrangement of exotic flowers.

"She's walking around like Miss America with a huge bouquet out of a big vase," she said. Jarvis said something to the woman, who told her to mind her own business. The woman then walked up the staircase near the wine cellars -- and mooned Jarvis from the catwalk.

"We fell on the floor laughing, it was so funny," she said.

"Art work," Robins said. " We've had people who've had a little too much to drink take down art that we've put up in the restaurant, or awards that we won."

Robins said one framed award was hanging in a hallway, and after about a week, "it was no longer with us. What somebody's doing with it, we're not quite sure."

Another problem may be at least partly unintentional.

"They like to walk out with our Riedel and our high-end glassware," he said, sometimes erroneously thinking the restaurant is part of the casino and that all of the glassware comes out of the same pool. Employees try to stop the offending guest at the hostess stand and transfer the drink to a plastic cup, he said.

But what do chefs and restaurant owners do when the incidents occur in their own businesses?

"Ask politely to please give it back," Robins said. "They're generally embarrassed and they do. Sometimes they raise a ruckus."

"The last time we caught something, it was very obvious," Serrano said. "The waiter saw it. We didn't say anything, but we put it on the bill. They paid."

Jarvis said one regular comes in with a young lady "and she'll steal it and then we'll have to say something discreetly to him. He'll just say, `Put it on the check.' "

"When we add it to the bill, the customer is not as embarrassed," Mauler said. "Of course, somebody has to see them" stealing it.

Most restaurants are willing to sell items, even if they don't have a gift shop.

"We would hope that people would ask," Robins said. "We would always give it to them at a discounted price -- our cost."

Of course, restaurants could stem at least part of the problem if they'd remove their logos from the items in their place settings, as some hotel chains have done with their ashtrays.

"Yeah, but it's a great way of advertising," Robins said. "It's a great way of continuing to put our name out there."