“Dining and Dashing” and Restaurant Security Camera Systems

Restaurants and bars can make for very successful businesses, but with success comes many opportunities for crime. One of the most obvious sources of illegal activity would be for your employees to steal from the cash register, but there are many other ways for your employees or customers to commit illegal activity. A growing trend for restaurant burglars is eating or drinking to their heart’s content and then hitting the road before paying the bill.

Theft of service arrests, or arrests for people who eat and then decide to skip out on their bill, are on the rise. Although theft of service is not as prevalent in bars as it is in other restaurants, it can still happen if a customer is running a tab. This method of crime has been dubbed by many as a “dine and dash”, and an example of this crime can be found in the surveillance footage from the video below.

If you are a restaurant or bar owner who is having this happen frequently, you might be getting bamboozled by more than just your clientele. Receiving several reports of dine and dash clients might entail that one of your employees is committing the crime. An employee may be pocketing money directly from their customers, and then blame the lack of money at the end of the shift on dine and dash customers. This form of theft is more likely to happen when the restaurant is busy to make the excuse more believable.

If you are receiving a large amount of dine and dash customers, you might find that one of your bartenders is faking reports of dine and dash customers. If it is a busy night in your bar, a bartender might be abusing the situation to pocket the money from multiple transactions, and then blame any lack of money at the end of the shift on walkout customers.

If you think an employee is pocketing money, or if your business frequently falls victim to dine and dashers, get a restaurant security camera system. If placed in key positions, security cameras can capture the physical details of your “dine and dash” customer, or expose faked “dine and dash” reports. In either scenario, security cameras can provide you the information to plan an appropriate course of action.

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