Yes, Atlanta restaurants know you’re stealing forks, glasses and other things

When Summerhill restaurant Little Bear opened in 2021, dessert was served with an iridescent spoon. It was thinner, shinier and certainly more colorful than the typical spoon, meant to add a touch of whimsy to each dainty bite of custard or carrot cake.

But chef/owner Jarrett Stieber noticed they went missing almost immediately. So he ordered more. A few weeks later, these spoons went missing, too.

His hunch: If the spoons weren’t accidentally being swept into the trash, customers were tucking them into their pockets and their handbags. So he stopped ordering them altogether, switching back to more standard spoons.

Iridescent knives are seen with a standard dessert spoon and a fork. The matching iridescent dessert spoons that Little Bear once used were disappearing so often that the restaurant switched to using the standard ones instead. (Arvin Temkar/AJC)

“That was not on our bingo card before we opened, that we’d have to consider that,” Stieber told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It forced our hand when we noticed that these ones seem to disappear at an exorbitantly faster rate than anything else. There’s got to be a reason.”

There’s an aphorism in restaurant circles: If it’s not bolted to the table or the wall, it’s at risk of going missing. This applies to cutlery, linens and glassware as much as it does soap dispensers or rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom.

Customers’ propensity to steal seemingly inconsequential items is a pesky problem for restaurants, from larger franchises to smaller-scale spots operating on thin margins. Loss is a consistent battle in the industry, said Bill Goudey, the CEO of a restaurant group that oversees local franchise Copeland’s of New Orleans and a board member of the Georgia Restaurant Association.

“I’ve had a long-standing feeling that we’re stolen from daily,” Goudey said. “It’s just a matter of: How much can you catch? How much can you manage?”

Restocking items at least once a year is commonplace for restaurants — it’s the cost of doing business. It’s difficult to tell how frequently items go missing because of theft versus how many of them are accidentally discarded in the trash or broken in the dish pit.

A customer once tried to steal this ceramic tiki mug at Little Bear. (Arvin Temkar/AJC)

Some places charge deposits for drinks served in particularly fancy barware customers may want to steal, such as Moscow mules, which are usually served in copper-coated mugs that can cost anywhere from $10 to $25 to replace.

In 2025, Little Bear had to place four separate restock orders, which was higher than previous years. Little Bear doesn’t have much of a surplus budget for restocking, Stieber said. They’re usually placing orders for just enough to get them through service.

At Marietta’s Michelin-starred restaurant Spring, spoons and steak knives go missing first, said chef Brian So. He estimates plates and barware don’t go missing as often because of how cumbersome and messy it can be to hide them away.

So places restock orders once every three or six months, and he budgets about 0.5% of revenue as a broad slush fund for buying new plates and equipment or replacing the missing items.

“I think that people probably don’t know the true cost of things, especially at a place like Spring,” So said. “They wouldn’t expect that a fork costs $7 or $8; they probably think it’s $1.99.”

A miniature butter dish at Spring in Marietta may have tempted some diners, though chef Brian So said plates and barware don’t go missing as often cutlery because of the size and messiness. (Henri Hollis/AJC)

There are a number of reasons why customers might feel compelled to steal items. They may get a rush out of it or think a particular glass or salt-and-pepper grinder would look good on their own kitchen table.

Redacted, a basement bar in Summerhill, has had minimal shrinkage since it opened in April. But a lot of their coasters have disappeared, its owners told the AJC. They don’t mind — they’re glad people like them enough to take.

Customers could also be looking for a way to justify spending their money at the restaurant, especially at costlier restaurants like Spring.

“There’s a sense of entitlement about it, you know, (like) ‘I’m spending $150 per person to eat here with tip, I should at least get a fork or something,’” So said. “I think there is a growing sense of how just much it costs to dine out. People are just a little bit more shocked every time they go out of how much it costs. Maybe they’re just trying to create a little more value for themselves.”

Customers aren’t typically caught in the act of stealing. But restaurant workers notice when only two spoons remain at a four-top table, especially when they squeal in delight upon seeing some of the silverware, Stieber said. It’s even more noticeable when the glasses they try to steal are poking out of their bag.

Little Bear owner and chef Jarred Stieber has branded pens on hand to satisfy some guests' desire for a "souvenir." "Let’s steer people to stealing things that we intentionally buy for them to steal,” he says. (Bailey Garrot for the AJC)