For a supposed genius eco-fix, reusable metal straws have multiple snags. Disability rights campaigners dislike them (less user-friendly than plastic), and now the New York Post reports they are being stolen from Manhattan cocktail bars and restaurants, something that is costing some of them $5,000 a year. It is news that will surprise no one in the hospitality game, where anything not nailed down disappears fast.
Glassware thefts cost UK pubs £186m annually, according to the equipment supplier Nisbets, with one in three of us guilty. In 2012, Jamie Oliver complained he was losing £30,000 a month, thanks to the loss of branded napkins (not so funny now, eh?), while staff at Yotam Ottolenghi’s Nopi and Rovi restaurants report a similar fashion in half-inching its bespoke, handmade napkins and napkin rings.
At Circolo Popolare in Fitzrovia, the ornamental fridge magnets come with a warning: “Hey, dickhead, don’t steal these.” But people will, with restaurant thefts often as audacious (historically, a signed Chris Eubank boxing glove at the 3 Acres in Huddersfield) as they are bizarre (vintage toilet handles at Oliver’s again). Hawksmoor’s co-owner Will Beckett says: “In our Covent Garden restaurant, someone keeps nicking the top of the soap dispenser in the gents – part theft, part elaborate prank. I assume someone’s got 20 at home and thinks it’s hilarious.” At Dhruv Mittal’s Lucknow 49, staff glue the art to the walls in the toilets, to deter offenders.
But why do people feel entitled to steal from restaurants? “It’s a combination of alcohol and handing over significant money – an ‘I’ve paid for it’ mentality,” says Restaurant magazine’s editor, Stefan Chomka. “Plus it’s an opportunity to get nice one-offs. I wouldn’t pinch Bibendum’s butter dishes or Bob Bob Ricard’s mother-of-pearl caviar spoons, but I can see why the more nefarious might.”
Some venues embrace this perverse marketing opportunity. In the 90s, Quaglino’s lost 12,000 metal Q ashtrays annually, generating huge publicity. Wahaca’s January amnesties for its coloured spoons (return one, get a free taco) are, says its co-founder Mark Selby, “fun in a gloomy month”. In Manchester, Yes bar opened with mugs emblazoned with “stolen from Yes” (500 lost since last September). Elsewhere in the city, Common bar’s owner, Jonny Heyes, is torn. Yes, it costs money. But if one of his Common mugs or pint pots ends up in your kitchen: “It’s like the brand spreading virally.” He chuckles: “You almost want people to nick them. It’s part of the game.”
