Barware bandits: the epidemic of sticky-fingered sippers
With 27% of British adults admitting to having stolen from a bar or restaurant, we explore how some venues are leaning into it, and others are combatting it.
When I was at university, it wasn’t unusual to wake up the morning after a big night out, stumble into the kitchen in search of hydration and carbs, and find our table littered with an assortment of branded beer glasses of all shapes and sizes that had been pilfered from one of the town’s local pubs. It almost seemed like a rite of passage to fill our cupboards with these glassware trophies, alongside the obligatory traffic cone, and the odd roll of toilet paper ‘for emergencies’. But we were teenagers with dubious morals and depleting bank accounts. It doesn’t excuse it, but much like the disclaimers you see at the beginning of old movies these days – it was a different time.
But it turns out that the urge to commit petty larceny hasn’t really left for many of us – our targets have just become elevated.
I’d like to begin by caveating this entire article with the acknowledgement that theft is a crime. It isn’t big, it isn’t clever – though it is sometimes creative – and it can be extremely harmful to businesses. But for some reason, while I’m confident none of my peer group would dine and dash or worse, rob a till, I know that the majority would find pocketing a coaster or slipping a nice wine glass into a handbag easily justifiable.
Animated response
I put the question to my social media followers: Have you ever stolen anything from a bar, and why did you do it?
I’d like to point out that I harvest the hive mind of social media a lot for my role at The Spirits Business, but never before has a call for insight been so enthusiastically responded to. By the time my poll-taking had come to an end, I had enough material to launch a true petty crime podcast, as a staggering 83% admitted to having pinched at least one thing from a bar, while 7% said they hadn’t, but had definitely thought about it.
Of that 83%, many slid straight into my DMs to tell me of their crimes – sort of like a digital confessions box, if you will. Once again, I will reiterate that theft is not okay – but I couldn’t help but be impressed by some of these heists – and the excuses that came with them.
One responder confessed to being so overwhelmed by the wedding planning process that he and his soon-to-be wife had stolen a large wooden crate that was being used to hold paper towels in the bathroom of a Mayfair bar, as they had decided it would be “just the thing to serve oysters in” at the reception. “In our defence,” he told me, “I would say that wedding planning does crazy things to you.” While I’m sure that wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, it certainly sounds like a justifiable defence to me.
Another DM confessional spoke of the lengths we go to for our families. “I stole a whisky glass in Edinburgh because it was so cute and my mum loved it,” one friend tells me. “She was super drunk and loved it, so I did it for her.”
Theft ‘under the influence’ was also a common theme in these admissions. “I stole a plant that I liked the look of at a bottomless brunch,” an old school friend shared, adding that “in the cold light of the following day, the plant was distinctly average and not worth the criminal activity – at the time though, I remember it being purely majestic.”
Even I can confess that after five-too-many Aperol Spritzes at a party, I thought it was a good idea to illegitimately acquire one of the jeroboams of Aperol on display, hiding it in my friend’s oversized bag and merrily skipping home to drink it in her garden. The cold light of day was even harsher for me in that instance, as it was then that we discovered the very clear ‘not for human consumption’ label displayed on the bottle. Needless to say I paid the price on a very dicey Tube journey into work that morning, and justice was categorically served.
‘Stolen from Sexy Fish’
Of all of the confessions I received, one particular theft kept coming up repeatedly.
The Sexy Fish chopstick rests, which have been famously inscribed with ‘Stolen from Sexy Fish’ on the bottom, seem to be one of the most common trophies dubiously obtained from a venue. In fact, a quick scan of social media shows many visitors boasting of their sticky-fingered acquisition.
But despite the inscription, these small bits of tableware seemingly aren’t always meant to be taken. In fact, they retail at £10 (US$13.30) a pop according to the menu of the Mayfair-based restaurant. But putting a monetary value on these fish-shaped rests doesn’t stop them being the perfect target of table-side theft. After all, they’re both small enough to disappear unnoticed from a table and slipped into a pocket, while also being recognisable (and a bit weird) enough to be considered a trophy. “It says you’re allowed” said one responder in my DMs, noting that the ‘stolen from’ motif is “open for interpretation”, while another responder said the inscription “felt like permission”.
While Sexy Fish declined to comment on the inscription’s origins, it seems fair to assume that the restaurant, and its Caprice Holdings stablemate The Ivy Asia, which also inscribes its fish-shaped chopstick holders with the mark, has incorporated the losses felt from these ‘thefts’ into its marketing budget (or maybe that’s how it justifies charging £26 for six pieces of sashimi). After all, it’s another way of getting the restaurants’ name into people’s homes, and a surefire way of getting guests to post about their visit on social media. One user on TikTok even said: “I was too much of a chicken to steal it, but soon realised after asking the waiter if I can take it, that it is a publicity stunt – so here is some publicity!”
Free marketing
And this additional bit of marketing appears to be the biggest silver lining that venues take away from the ordeal of having their property stolen.
One responder wrote to me from Vancouver, Canada, where she works on the beverage development team for Earls Kitchen + Bar, a venue with 72 locations across Canada and the US. She explained that in the 40 years of being in business, the restaurants have seen everything from unique mugs and glassware, to cutlery, plates, and even paper mâché chickens stolen. “What they have done,” she says, “is brand as much as possible so that when people take them home, it’s still shows the brand or logo on it.”
The same has been done at tropical north London bar Laki Kane. When the venue first opened in 2018, owner Georgi Radev told me it wasn’t long before they had to rethink the use of some palm tree-shaped spoons used in one of its cocktails on account of them all going ‘missing’.
Now, however, following a recent bar refresh, Radev can see the positive side: “We have exclusively designed tiki mugs from ceramic waste with Laki Kane written on it, so when people take it, it is free marketing for us! If we’re being honest, we really don’t mind people taking them as a souvenir every now and again.”
Katherine Saunders, co-founder of Doghouse Distillery in Battersea, shares that “when we have events [at the distillery], people love to take home our branded heavy duty plastic cups, and I never mind because it’s just getting the branding out there. I like the thought of the cups making it to someone’s home and being in the cupboard and being used.”
It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a modern-day epidemic. In fact, one of the most stolen souvenirs in the on-trade, the Quaglino’s ashtray, has been making its way home in customers’ pockets since the early 1990s.
“Designed by Sir Terence Conran in 1991, the Quaglino’s ashtray became an icon in its own right,” says Jack Smith, Quaglino’s executive chef, who has worked for the venue’s owner, The Evolv Collection (formerly D&D London), for nearly 20 years. “Quaglino’s and Conran were known for style and design-led dining, and guests saw the ashtray as a piece of that to take home.
“More than 25,000 vanished in the first decade, generating huge media buzz and sparking conversation that continues today. They now sell for up to £75 (US$100) online, making those early ‘disappearances’ worth over £1.8 million (US$2.39m),” he notes. While the financial loss is seemingly large, Smith shares that it’s a quirky part of the Quaglino’s story that’s had a lasting impact. “So for our 95th anniversary in October 2024, we brought it back in chocolate form for guests to ‘steal’ again – a nod to the mischief that started it all.”
The loss adds up
According to research by catering company Nisbets in 2023, four million people in the UK steal tableware from a pub, bar or restaurant more than once a week, and you’re likely to find stolen glasses from bars and restaurants in the homes of more than 37m Brits, with the most common culprits falling between 18- to 34-years old. In fact, it is said that 27% of British adults admit to having stolen from a pub, bar or restaurant in their lifetime.
While it is possible for venues to take a glass half-full approach to thefts, the fact of the matter is that it can be hugely detrimental to a bar’s bottom line. One pocketed glass might seem like nothing, but it doesn’t take long for it to add up.
Allison Crawbuck, owner and director of The Absinthe Parlour at The Last Tuesday Society in London, says they often find their absinthe spoons, which are “really beautiful, Art Nouveau-inspired spoons” mysteriously go missing, with it not being uncommon to lose up to 10 a week. “The spoons are roughly £6.30 excluding VAT wholesale, so the loss quickly adds up. We have our team quietly count the spoons when collecting them from a table so they can ask customers if perhaps a lost spoon has maybe fallen on the floor, giving the customers a chance to return them from their pockets.”
While she hopes these thefts are a sign that more people want to drink absinthe at home, she notes that they’re not currently branded. “This is something we’re looking into doing so at least they remember the venue the spoons were stolen from after bringing them home.”
Earlier this year, Top Gear host turned farmer and publican Jeremy Clarkson, who opened The Farmer’s Dog in Burford, Oxfordshire last summer, shared in his column for The Sunday Times that the pub had seen an “extraordinary” level of glass theft. “One Sunday,” he wrote, “104 [Hawkstone beer glasses] went missing. And that cost must be added to the £100 a day we spend on fuel for the generator, the £400 a week it costs to provide warmth on the terrace and the £27,000 a month we must spend on parking and traffic marshals to keep the council off out back.”
He added: “People seem to have it in their heads that if they come in for a pint, they are entitled to go home with the glass in which it was served.”
View this post on Instagram
Calling customers out on their pilfering is one way to prevent thefts, but there are other lengths bars go to to keep hold of their stuff.
While Clarkson has taken to simply writing “Jeremy is watching. Don’t steal his pint glasses!” on his beer mats (which can be taken, if one insists on taking a souvenir), De Dulle Griet, a cosy pub in Ghent, Belgium, makes you deposit one of your shoes before it will serve you a beer presented in a boot-shaped glass. While some may consider the loss of a shoe a fair price to pay in exchange for acquiring a boot-shaped glass, it seems to do the job in the most part.
Another measure bars are taking is to simply glue or nail down anything that may be deemed nickable.
Before she owned Doghouse, Saunders owned a craft beer bar that had framed photos of celebrities drinking beer in the toilets. “We screwed the frames into the wall rather than just hang them to try and deter thieves, but regularly after a busy night we would find one ripped out of the wall! One time, I went into the toilets to find all of the frames still there but every single photo removed.”
The problem is, where there is a will, there is a way, and sometimes even the most unlikely of things can be be a target. Tako Chang, brand and PR manager at Double Chicken Please, shared that the New York bar has seen everything from lightbulbs, name card holders, jacket hooks and even restroom door knobs purloined from the venue. “Thank god the toilet bowl and sink were left there”, she says, proving that while sticky-fingered sippers might take the piss with thefts, they’ll never take the bar industry’s sense of humour about it.
Related news
Mataroa Gin features at Roma Bar Show
