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‘Adam” is a waiter’s nightmare. The 35-year-old accountant, who lives in Brooklyn and asked that his real name not be used, has been known to skip out on the check at restaurants. Once he and three friends racked up a $300 tab at B.B. King’s in Times Square, then stepped outside for a cigarette. It wasn’t until they saw a pedicab passing by that they decided the night’s bill would be on the house. Explaining his occasional adventures in the criminal world, Adam shrugs and says, “Sometimes you’re drunk or, I don’t know . . . ”
Apparently, he’s not alone.
Eating in a restaurant and leaving without paying the tab — known in police parlance as “theft of service” — rose almost 20 percent in the city last year, up from 315 arrests in 2009 to 376 in 2010, according to the NYPD. Of course, those numbers don’t include the many scofflaws who successfully “lick and split.”
Even celebs have been busted. Last week, actor Gary Collins was arrested for allegedly skipping out on a $59.35 bill in a Biloxi, Miss., restaurant. The 72-year-old TV personality spent the night in jail before being released on $5,000 bail.
Whether or not Collins’ bizarre behavior was the result of a simple misunderstanding, this incident — and Adam’s dine-and-dash antics — raises the question: Why would grown men bail on a bill?
According to industry vets, it’s frequently older, professional-looking types who are breaking for the border — whether for the thrill of getting something for free or simply because of an overblown sense of entitlement.
“People think it’s the young who cheat — [but] I feel like half the time it’s people with a little more savvy,” says chef-owner Jehangir Mehta of Graffiti in the East Village and Mehtaphor in TriBeCa’s Duane Street Hotel.
Recently, a group of eight 30-somethings came into Mehtaphor about 45 minutes before their reservation, demanding to be seated. Their table wasn’t ready, so the group opted to wait at the bar, where it ran up a tab of more than $100. But as its table was being set up a few minutes before the scheduled reservation time, the group harrumphed that it would no longer wait — skipping out on the bar tab, too.
“It was very calculatedly done,” says Mehta, who notes that in the past six months he’s encountered several instances of customer swindling — ranging from a credit-card dispute to gratuitous wrangling for freebies.
“There’s this one guy straight out of Brooks Brothers with the bow tie, the suspenders, the little turned-up moustache like the Monopoly guy [sitting] at the bar drinking martinis,” recalls Charles Milite, co-owner of Union Square hot spot Coffee Shop. “He had five of them and said, ‘I can’t believe this — I forgot my wallet! This is so embarrassing. I live right across the park. I’ll be right back.’ Then he didn’t come back, and I found out he’s done that four or five other times.”
Some use a smoke break as a pretense, while others take advantage of sidewalk cafes. A few even stoop so low as to use their kids as a distraction.
“We’ve had husbands and wives and entire families do it,” says Michael Carpiniello, owner of SoHo’s South Houston restaurant, who says he encounters dine-and-dashers about once a month. “The kids go outside to play, the mom goes out to get them and suddenly it’s like, ‘Where did everyone go?’ ”
Often, scammers will use sophisticated methods to dine and dash.
“People have gotten really slick at it,” says Frank Christopher, owner of the Upper West Side’s Smoke Jazz & Supper Club-Lounge. “You actually get really nice-looking customers coming in who are dressed up, and they’ll leave an old cellphone on the table or a purse with nothing in it while they’re ‘going outside to smoke,’ and then they leave.”
Fittingly, Christopher dubs such scenarios the “chew and screw.”
According to Aspen Social Club events manager Andrea Huisking, people will also leave coats, IDs and credit cards as collateral — the problem is, they’re stolen.
Occasionally, unscrupulous restaurant employees are complicit. It’s not uncommon for customers to leave their credit card at a bar after a night of carousing and not bother to pick up the plastic, opting to simply cancel it instead. Sometimes those cards are then sold to crooks who use them to ring up big bar tabs, says Noah, a front-of-house vet who declined to give his last name.
After 25 years of working in top-shelf restaurants like Barolo, Benoit and Bar Breton, Noah says he’s seen it all. That includes the businessman who went outside for “better cellphone coverage,” the diner who insisted her meal be comped because it was her birthday (“What are we, Howard Johnson’s now?” he quips) and the well-heeled woman who went to the local bank to exchange some euros and never returned.
“Restaurants are the last existing people who issue instant credit,” he says. “You’re immediately granted an AmEx with no limit.”
South Houston’s Carpiniello says the “shadiest” folks are those who “pay with a credit card, then dispute it later.” He says he once hosted a large birthday party that rang up a huge bill, which was later disputed — resulting in a $1,000 tab that he had to eat.
“It’s like someone didn’t realize that they had that extra round of Patrón, and the next day they’re like, ‘Oh, crap,’ ” says Huisking, adding that such disputes crop up about once every three weeks at Aspen Social Club.
Perhaps the most frequent offenders are diners who polish off a meal, then complain after the fact that their steak wasn’t cooked to their liking in the hopes of a comped dinner. (Most will settle for a free dessert.)
Then there’s the guy who demanded a free bottle of wine at Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto on the UWS after his table downed a few glasses, then noticed the vino was cheaper by the bottle.
“Granted, I’ve only been working in New York City for 3½ years, but I feel like [such incidents] have definitely increased,” says beverage director Tara Rizzi. “It’s always bizarre to see full-grown adults trying to argue with us about the charges of the food. The price is on the menu.”
But some believe the occasional dine-and-dasher is just the price you pay for working in the hospitality industry.
“For me, it’s not worth [fighting over],” says Mehta, noting that as a small operator, a bad online review on Yelp can do serious damage to business.
Still, that’s of little solace to servers who rely on tips to supplement their wage of $5 an hour.
Coffee Shop waitress and theater student Lola Albright (pictured left on page 33) says that when a couple in their late 30s deliberately stiffed her on a $45 tab a couple weeks ago, she felt the pinch.
“A really good-looking couple came in,” recalls the 26-year-old Albright. “They were so nice. They sat there forever, then, when I got slammed, they left.”
But it wasn’t just an $8 or $9 tip Albright lost out on.
“We [the servers] have to tip out the runners, bussers, bar-backs and hosts, and it’s based on [the check’s] taxes,” she explains.
And sometimes it’s the richest, most aggressive Type-A personalities who give poorly paid servers the worst treatment.
Milite recalls the time a 50-something business associate “worth a couple million dollars” defended his habit of dining and dashing, telling the restaurateur: “You know what? When I’m done with my meal and I’m ready to go, I walk out. And if the server isn’t paying attention, I walk away. If they’re interested in me or my money, they’ll pay attention.”
Milite pauses. “It’s ridiculous, but that’s how he justifies it.”