Shoplifters beware: John Catsimatidis, CEO of New York’s Gristedes and Food Emporium chains, is not having it.
When it comes to the stealing and selling of food from their markets, Catsimatidis and his staff sometimes— unlike other retailers — tackle shoplifters before the police can arrive.
He has also had one of the most commonly stolen items, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, given anti-theft coding so security staff can trace where it is sold.
“Dial 911 and you might as well just go away,” Catsimatidis told The Post. “Shoplifters will take half the store before the police arrive.”
Workers at Gristedes and Food emporium have stopped shoplifters in the act.
“We don’t demand that they do it,” Catsimatidis said. “But if they do, we reward them.”
Rewards for defending the markets range from $100 to $500, plus medical expenses and any potential legal fees (the latter has yet to arise), said Dominick Albergo, head of security for Catsimatidis and a former NYPD officer.
Defensive techniques take a toll. Albergo told The Post, “A woman who worked as a manager broke her tooth after tackling a shoplifter at a Gristedes on Ninth Avenue a couple years ago.
“Around the same time, an employee tried to stop someone and got stabbed at Gristedes on Eighth Avenue.
“In January, a shoplifter produced a knife when we stopped him and he started stabbing plastic bottles of water.”
Among the main targets for shoplifters is premium ice cream.
“They steal Häagen-Dazs from our supermarket and take it four blocks away to the nearest bodega,” Catsimatidis said. “They need to get there before it melts.”
The store is now marking Häagen-Dazs before it goes on sale. “We’ve been coding all the Häagen-Dazs that is ours,” he said. “Then we check the bodegas for what’s been stolen.”
Albergo said they have been able to deter most thieves.
“The shoplifters come in with a garbage bag, put 30 containers into the bag and take off,” Albergo told The Post.
“Then we find our ice cream in bodegas and tell the bodega owners that if we find them again, we will go to the precinct and have them locked up. The good news is, at that point, most of the bodegas get nervous about buying stolen goods.”
Catsimatidis said that coming down on shoplifters is a point of pride as well as a means to protect his inventory.
“We show them that we care about our store and that they are not going to take from us,” he said. “If my employees were not on our side, I would close the stores.”
Catsimatidis even has some advice for shoplifters: “Let them go steal from CVS and Walgreens where employees are not on the company side.”
