After seven break-ins, Puget Sound coffee chain hopes lawmakers fix what they broke

Small businesses that are already struggling to survive in the best of times, have been impacted by the pandemic, and now are being impacted by increasing crime rates.

Tim, who works with Cafe Elite, which has 22 drive-through coffee stands across the Puget Sound region, told The Dori Monson Show last week that there had been seven break-ins at their stands in three days, all by the same person.

“We were clearly being targeted, or at least it certainly felt that way,” Tim said. “They’re chasing cash. The problem is that we have 4K cameras on all of our stands, we can identify exactly who this person is — we were able to social media track them, figure out who they were — unfortunately, not much can be done about it.”

Tim says they have to remove the cash from the stands every night.

“They’re chasing the cash, and so we can’t drop that in the safe,” he said. “So now what they’re doing is they’re beating lockboxes off of our buildings and then drilling them out and going in and trying to steal the cash.”

“We’ve had to resort to changing all the lockboxes. We have 150 baristas that work for our company and they will switch from stand to stand depending upon scheduling and need,” he added. “But unfortunately now we can’t keep the cash. So we don’t even keep cash now in the stands — we collect it at night and we bring it back at four o’clock in the morning just to make sure that they don’t do that. They’re causing $500 to $1,000 for the damage each time they do this to steal $100.”

Tim says the break-ins have been reported to police, but the crimes have been in multiple jurisdictions, which makes it more difficult to resolve.

“You have multiple jurisdictions that because they’re so short staffed, because they’re underfunded, they don’t have the manpower or the bandwidth even to discuss it amongst themselves to try and find a resolution,” he said about the police departments. “And even if they did, what we were told is that literally criminals are not being put into jail. They might be booked, but they’re certainly not sticking there, and they haven’t unless they’re doing something that is more egregious.”

“It’s not the police [officers’] fault,” he added. “The lawmakers, … they broke it, and now they need to fix it.”

Tim says the biggest concern after the break-ins is the safety and security of the employees.

“We need to make sure that we’re taking care of them and providing them with everything that they need,” he said. “We’re doing what we have to do to protect the property, protect safety and security, the integrity of the employees, and make sure that they’re comfortable.”

“We need them to come to work,” he added. “Our customers are loyal to us. We want to make sure that we’re there for them. And we are absolutely appreciative of the continued support of small business because without that, who knows where we would be.”

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.