{"id":45268,"date":"2026-05-22T06:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/45268\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T06:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:10:21","slug":"chef-jose-pizarro-my-restaurant-has-been-broken-into-four-times-london-has-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/45268\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef Jose Pizarro: \u2018My restaurant has been broken into four times \u2013 London has changed\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chef Jose Pizarro was lying on the beach on holiday<\/a> in his native Spain <\/a>last Sunday when he received a message: one of his restaurants <\/a>in London<\/a> \u2013 Jose Tapas Bar on Bermondsey Street \u2013 had been broken into<\/a>. \u201cI felt very sad and very angry, but also very calm at the same time,\u201d Pizarro tells me. \u201cBecause this is a normal thing now; I\u2019m used to it<\/a>. It\u2019s almost like, whatever, another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the fourth time in the last two years<\/a> that his tapas bar was broken into. It happened in broad daylight at 5.40am on a Sunday morning, with thieves<\/a> stealing several bottles of spirits and wine. The estimated damage, which includes repairing broken glass, is \u00a3600.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about the money \u2013 it\u2019s about the stress, and the moral side of it,\u201d explains Pizarro. \u201cMy team had to deal with getting there at 6am in the morning, working out what\u2019s going on, what can they do? It\u2019s the fact that it keeps happening again. Stealing is becoming normalised. I\u2019m really angry with the system that allows this to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pizarro posted a CCTV clip of the break-in on his Instagram account, writing: \u201cIt breaks my heart that so many small businesses in London are going through this again and again. Behind the scenes our staff are working hard, trying their best, supporting families, paying bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pay more tax than ever before \u2013 huge amounts in tax, work endless hours, to create jobs and try to build good places for our communities\u2026 while the streets around us become dirtier and less safe by the day, and it often feels like the system protects the criminals and thieves more than the people trying to do the right thing. It\u2019s all upside down.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent survey from the British Retail Consortium<\/a> found that shoplifting alone cost UK retailers \u00a3400m last year, with one theft taking place every six seconds. Shoplifting has more than doubled since the pandemic, with 5.5 million incidents in 2025. In London<\/a>, shoplifting soared by 50 per cent from 2024-2025, while a 2023 Home Office survey<\/a> found almost half of retail and wholesale business premises had at least one incident of commercial crime during the last year.<\/p>\n

\"PizarroPizarro says the normalisation of stealing has made him angry, as well as the stress his team goes through (Emma Lee)<\/p>\n

Pizarro has seen the change first hand. He now runs six restaurants<\/a> in the UK, but his first was Jose\u2019s \u2013 in 2011. \u201cBack when people said, \u2018are you crazy, why are opening here?\u2019 I said it\u2019s the only place I can pay a good rent. But everyone was lovely and I felt absolutely safe. I never felt problems there. But now, it\u2019s not the same as before. People don\u2019t feel as safe as before. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last few years you see a lot more homeless people and people who need help. If you have an addiction you\u2019ll do anything for a bottle of wine. What we need to do is support them \u2013 and for the police to be strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his recent break-in, a local police officer emailed Pizarro confirming \u201cthere have been more burglaries than usual\u201d and saying he reached out to the new ward councillors for further support such as more CCTV for the streets, adding: \u201cYou can send us any still images yourself to see if we can recognise the perpetrators; as I am more than happy to do a statement and go to court if I can identify someone and support you and our local businesses. If they are homeless drug users; we deal with them often, so good chance we could assist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pizarro finds the police \u201cvery sweet\u201d and believes most of the police do care \u2013 but he also feels they don\u2019t do enough. \u201cThere\u2019s not enough money and not enough people,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need to make the police strong with [thieves]; they don\u2019t have any fear about anything. The police and the government need to protect us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He points out that apart from break-ins and thefts, many of his staff have had their phones stolen by thieves on bikes<\/a> or motorbikes when coming home after work. \u201cYou finish work, after a hard day, you want to talk to your partner on the phone about your day \u2013 and what happens is some stupid kid steals your mobile. How do you feel after working very hard all day? It\u2019s public disorder, young people intimidating people and it\u2019s not right.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a business owner dealing with recent tax increases, he finds it particularly unjust. \u201cI pay my taxes and deserve to have a safe business. I\u2019m happy to pay tax if I make money. I\u2019m not happy to pay it now because it\u2019s overpaid and we can\u2019t afford to pay it. People say you have three busy restaurants you\u2019re making a lot of money: I\u2019m not. I\u2019m doing fine, yes, but so many people opening a new business will be struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA sign warning of phone theft on Oxford Street created by Currys and supported by the Met Police (Getty)<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also angry at the government response, referencing a 2025 anti-phone-theft campaign in London, supported by Westminster council and the Met Police. Signs were placed along pavements in central London with warnings such as \u201cMind the Grab.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot believe it,\u201d he says. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you pay more to the police to stop people stealing? Imagine what someone coming from outside London feels when they see that? They need to feel protected – not scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has also seen an increase in people leaving his restaurant<\/a> without paying. Last week, a man left his restaurant without paying a \u00a3140 bill. Pizarro wanted to put a photo of the man\u2019s face on Instagram, politely asking him to come back and pay his bill. But he was advised not to by his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told me then the problem\u2019s going to be mine,\u201d he says, evidently frustrated with the system. \u201cI don\u2019t charge that back to my team. But another business would say to the waiters, this is your table, you have to pay. Can you imagine someone working for \u00a3150 to \u00a3200 a day, and having to pay that out of their wages? That\u2019s happening in some businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hopes that things will start to change with more police action cracking down on shoplifting, thefts and break-ins, because the current climate is adding huge challenges for independent businesses \u2013 particularly small ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re making it impossible to run restaurants and small businesses,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very tough now. I see it everywhere \u2013 it\u2019s not just me saying that. In the past, I felt a lot safer, and I think people felt safer as well. The only thing we need to do is keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chef Jose Pizarro was lying on the beach on holiday in his native Spain last Sunday when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[6764,22884,173,6355,368,27,6034,22887,6767,22731,22886,22885,5],"class_list":["post-45268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-color-image","tag-danger","tag-england","tag-horizontal","tag-law","tag-london","tag-london-england","tag-pedestrian","tag-photography","tag-risk","tag-stealing-crime","tag-telephone","tag-uk"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116616745823570682","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}