Ask George: How common are restaurant scams?

How common are restaurant scams? —Jason L., Clayton

The answer is not that common, but nevertheless it’s a subject that restaurant chefs and owners love to grouse about. Restaurant scams manifest themselves in a variety of ways: unreasonable/unfounded complaints about a meal, customers arguably placing foreign objects in their food to obtain a free meal, “tip jacking,” and downright thievery, among others.

Tip Jacking: This appears in the news from time to time, because it’s demonstrable. Tip jacking occurs when a server jacks up his or her tip (changing a 3 to an 8, for example), knowing that most customers never reconcile tip amounts on their charge statements.

Complaints: Arguably the easiest way to cop a free meal is to complain about it. Claims along the lines of “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” have been common for years, but in some cases surveillance footage has shown customers actually placing objects—a hair, an insect, etc.—in their dish to try to get a free meal. Same goes for the hard-to-prove claims of “I got food poisoning at your restaurant.” In any case, it makes more sense for an owner to comp a meal than risk the potential negative consequences on social media. Fortunately, the above incidents are rare.

False Claims: Several years ago, local restaurateurs compared notes after an individual registered complaints—about items never ordered, it turned out. He was dubbed the “scamwich artist.” Again such incidents are rare, but they make for great stories:

Crushed Red co-founder Chris LaRocca recalls a time decades ago when a woman complained about a popular dish (a seafood pasta) at Crazy Fish, another restaurant that he founded. Sensing some insincerity, he asked, “Was it the pasta with shrimp and crab meat?” The woman replied, “Yes, that was it,” at which point he informed her that they’ve never served such a pasta.

Pappy’s Mike Emerson recalls a similar story. While complaining, a customer claimed that he and his daughter had been coming to the restaurant for years and there had never been a problem. Emerson replied, “Well, thank you.” When the man added that his daughter was 16, Emerson politely informed him that Pappy’s had only been open for four years at the time. (Although he recalls few such incidents, Emerson says having the opportunity to catch someone in the act “almost makes it worth it.”)

To-Go Happy Hour: Also somewhat common is when people load up on half-price, dine-in-only appetizers at the end of happy hour (ordering for “our friends who are on the way”), then claim that their friends couldn’t make it and take most of the bounty to go.

No Reservations: When Harvest restaurant opened in the mid-90s, it was so popular that reservations backed up literally for months. The unscrupulous, desperate to snag a table at the hottest restaurant in town, would insist while at the front desk that they’d made a reservation and “surely there must be some mistake.” Fortunately, the restaurant had a very specific and routinized way of confirming every reservation. In most cases, the perpetrators, knowing the jig was up, left without incident.

Theft: Although theft is not a scam per se, restaurants often have glass-half-full ways of dealing with it. After having ornaments repeatedly stolen off its Christmas tree, a restaurant in Columbia, Missouri, put hundreds of restaurant-made clothespin reindeer on the tree (containing the establishment’s name, phone number, and year) and encouraged customers to take one home for their trees.

And at The Shack (which just yesterday announced massive expansion plans), partner Brant Baldanza posted the following, in the wake of an ongoing disappearance of coffee mugs.