Shoplifters beware: John Catsimatidis, CEO of New York’s Gristedes and Food Emporium chains, isn’t doing that.
When it comes to stealing food from the market and selling it, Catsimatidis and his staff, unlike other retailers, sometimes catch shoplifters before the police arrive.
He also had Haagen-Dazs ice cream, one of the most stolen products, with anti-theft coding so security could track where it was being sold.
“If you call 911, you should just walk away,” Catsimatidis told the Post. “Shoplifters will take over half the store before the police arrive.”
Gristedes and a grocery store worker stopped a shoplifter.
“We’re not asking them to do that,” Catsimatidis said. “But if they do, we reward them.”
Dominic Albergo, Catsimatidis’ security chief and a former New York City police officer, said the reward for protecting the market ranges from $100 to $500, plus medical and potential legal costs, the latter of which has yet to be incurred. ) is included.
Defensive techniques are taxing. “A few years ago, a woman who worked as a manager broke her tooth at Gristedes on Ninth Avenue after catching a shoplifter,” Albergo told the Post.
“Around the same time, an employee at Gristedes on Eighth Avenue was stabbed while trying to stop someone.
“In January, when we stopped a shoplifter, he pulled out a knife and started stabbing water bottles.”
The main target of shoplifters is premium ice cream.
“They steal Haagen-Dazs from our supermarkets and take them to the nearest dealership, four blocks away,” Catsimatidis said. “We need to get there before it melts.”
The store is currently marking Haagen-Dazs products before they go on sale. “We’ve coded every Haagen-Dazs,” he said. “Then we’ll check the warehouse to see if anything has been stolen.”
Albergo said he was able to thwart most thieves.
“The shoplifter comes in with a garbage bag, puts 30 containers in the bag and leaves,” Albergo told the Post.
“Then we found the ice cream in a bodega and told the bodega owner that if we found it again we would go to the precinct and lock him up. The good news is that at that point most bodegas were nervous about buying stolen goods. It means that it has become.”
Catsimatidis said that while he takes pride in cracking down on shoplifters, it’s also a way to protect inventory.
“We’re showing them that we care about our store and they’re not going to take our store away,” he said. “If the employees weren’t on our side, I would have closed the store.”
Mr. Catsimatidis also advises shoplifters to “let them steal from CVS and Walgreens, where the employees are not working for the company.”
