Since opening seven years ago in Uptown Oakland, Mexican restaurant Agave Uptown has been broken into 19 times.
The two most recent break-ins—which occurred in August and September—resulted in a combined loss of approximately $48,000, said Osvaldo Sanchez, Agave’s general manager. That number includes repairs and replacements for broken doors, locks, windows, security cameras, and speakers, in addition to stolen cash and liquor.
“It’s really hard for us to survive right now,” Sanchez said.
Security video shows that the August break-in occurred around 4 a.m. Four people raided the restaurant while two others remained outside, presumably to look out for police or bystanders.
They used crowbars to break the locks, shattered the glass doors and windows, and smashed the indoor security cameras and emergency alarm speakers. They located the back office, where they stole roughly $10,000 in employees’ tips from a safe.
“I ended up paying that money from my own pocket,” said Sanchez. “It’s not like I can come out and say, ‘Hey, they took your tips, so I’m not going to pay you.’ It’s my responsibility.”
Sanchez’s story is not uncommon. The number of commercial burglaries citywide is up 10% compared to this time last year, according to the Oakland Police Department’s weekly crime report. Many other business owners have voiced similar frustrations, adding that the increase in commercial and car break-ins has made patrons hesitant to dine out in Oakland, making a post-pandemic rebound even more difficult.
Throughout the city, the stories of restaurant break-ins are eerily similar. Many restaurateurs who shared their experiences with The Oaklandside said the break-ins were swift, yet methodical, and were committed by a group of at least four individuals.
As dozens of food and beverage businesses in Oakland fall victim to break-ins, many people may not fully understand the scope of the devastation that perpetrators leave behind. Each break-in can result in thousands of dollars in repairs and a cascade of negative impacts. Damages to storefronts and equipment force temporary closures and frantic menu alterations. Some restaurant owners have grown so frustrated with the lack of response from OPD that they’re experimenting with their own solutions.
By shedding light on the experiences of business owners across the city’s commercial corridors, The Oaklandside seeks to help readers better understand the toll of break-ins—and why many Oaklanders say the problem has reached a tipping point.
Agave gets hit again
Following the August break-in, Agave Uptown stopped accepting cash payments. When patrons tip in cash, Sanchez deposits the money at a bank as soon as possible to avoid having cash at the restaurant and adds those tips to workers’ paychecks.
Still, one month later, Agave Uptown was broken into again. The six burglars this time around must have known the restaurant no longer accepts cash, Sanchez said, because instead of rummaging the cash registers or searching for a safe, the crew nabbed approximately $9,000 worth of high-end liquor stored in the back office and left quickly.
Nowadays, Sanchez takes the more expensive bottles home after work and leaves only the cheaper liquor at the restaurant overnight.
“It shouldn’t be like this,” he said. “You can’t not be safe in your own business.”
Sanchez reported the August break-in to his commercial insurance company, but he requested that his insurer not cover any of the losses so his rates wouldn’t increase. He also reported the incident to OPD, but officers didn’t show up at the restaurant until four hours after he made the call.
Sanchez chose not to report the September break-in to his insurance company. When he called OPD, they instructed him to submit an online report.
Some restaurants have strategies that work
Other business owners have found different ways to deter break-ins. Michele LeProhn, the owner of Communitē Table in the Laurel District, said her restaurant has experienced only one major break-in attempt in the past nine years.
“We’ve been really, really lucky,” she said. “With all the glass that we have in this restaurant, we’ve never had a window broken.”
Rather than making her restaurant look like “a fortress,” she said, being present and aware of the surrounding neighborhood has likely led to her experiencing significantly fewer break-ins than other food establishments.
“I wave to everybody who walks by, I see people, I make sure that they see us,” said LeProhn. “We don’t say no to bathroom use. I just feel it’s really important for us to be part of this community.”
Posting “no cash” signs on their storefronts has helped other restaurateurs prevent break-ins. Mica Talmor, the owner of Middle Eastern eatery Pomella on Piedmont Avenue, stopped accepting cash after her restaurant was broken into last summer. When she and other restaurant owners nearby started displaying “no cash” signs, the difference “was quite immediate,” she said.
“We have [no cash] written down everywhere, and we leave our cash register open and empty every night,” said Talmor. “That has actually helped a lot.”
False alarm fees add to the financial toll of break-ins
Elke Tatad is the managing partner and owner of Todos Cantina and Cocina in Uptown Oakland. During the Mexican restaurant’s latest burglary, in the early morning of Nov. 30, two people ransacked the interior and two others stayed outside, according to surveillance video.
As soon as one of Tatad’s business partners dispatched OPD, the crew vacated the premises immediately, leading Tatad to believe that they might have been listening to a police scanner during the act.
“This was not petty theft—these were professionals,” he said.
But Tatad’s experience was unique in other ways. When reporting the burglary to OPD, he learned that his business had been placed on a “do not respond” list due to “too many false alarms.”
Those false alarms happened in February and March, the first one having been a real burglary, the second one being due to an employee having trouble with the alarm code.
Per Oakland’s City Alarm Ordinance, a business must pay the city $84 for every burglary false alarm. The fee jumps to $156 for a false panic or robbery alarm.
“It’s a way to gouge people and get people to pay when [police] don’t even come out anyway,” said Tatad, who paid the city $168 for the two alarms. “I had to call Carroll Fife, my councilwoman, to even get somebody to come out here because I tried to file a police report and nobody came out here to take a statement or anything.”
Fife represents District 3—which encompasses West Oakland, the port, parts of downtown, the Jack London District, Mosswood, Westlake, and Adams Point—on Oakland’s City Council.
“I’m heartbroken by the fact that many small businesses have had to get loans or dip into their savings to survive after break-ins,” Fife said.
Even though Todos Cantina and Cocina just celebrated its first anniversary last month, Tatad said the restaurant has already been broken into nine times—the first time while it was still under construction.
According to security camera footage of that incident, several people chained a truck to the restaurant’s front door, which damaged the doorframe and broke the glass door open. While inside, they stole construction materials and tools.
With the most recent burglary adding up to $20,000 in losses, all nine break-ins have left Tatad and his business partners in a “six-figure hole,” he said.
“We try to give [our employees] a decent living and give benefits to these guys, and it’s hard because when you’re already in a hole and you have another $20,000 loss, sometimes you’re like, do I have to start cutting benefits, you know?” Tatad said.
Changing the menu to account for stolen equipment
Dominica Rice-Cisneros, an award-winning chef who owns the Mexican restaurant Bombera in the Dimond District, said break-ins were never an issue for her—even when she owned the now-shuttered Cosecha Cafe in Old Oakland between 2011 and 2021—until this year when Bombera was burglarized two times.
At approximately 6 a.m. on a rainy day last February, a crew of masked people used crowbars to break the front door of Bombera. As the restaurant’s security alarms blared, they forced their way inside the back office. Since Bombera does not accept cash, they didn’t find a safe and quickly left.
“It’s really scary to see that footage of how fast and organized they were,” Rice-Cisneros said.
About a month later, another group of masked people forced their way into Farmer Joe’s Marketplace on Fruitvale Avenue, located behind Bombera. “They were different people, but just as organized,” said Rice-Cisneros. They broke the back door of the supermarket, which connected to Bombera’s rear entrance. While inside, the crew stole coffee-making equipment and other items before breaking into two other businesses nearby.
Police officers arrived at the restaurant several hours after the first break-in to take down a report. The second time, police didn’t show up at the restaurant and told Rice-Cisneros to file an online report.
Taking into account the damaged doors and stolen coffee equipment, both break-ins at Bombera left her with an approximately $20,000 deficit. It took one to two months to get everything repaired or replaced, which meant she had to modify several menu items while waiting for new equipment.
As of December, her commercial insurance company has not yet covered any of the losses.
In case of another break-in, Rice-Cisneros keeps all the restaurant’s locker and storage rooms unlocked overnight to prevent further destruction. She’s considering hiring an overnight security team—which she had at Cosecha—to keep an eye out on her restaurant and nearby establishments.
“I wish there were more [police] patrols in the evening, but OPD is definitely overwhelmed right now,” she said.
District 4 Councilmember Janani Ramachandran—whose district includes Dimond, Allendale, Laurel, Glenview, Redwood Heights, Montclair, and other neighborhoods—said that Bombera represents the plethora of successful minority-owned restaurants in East Oakland that put the Town on the map.
“Some people might not have ever visited the Dimond neighborhood if it wasn’t for some of these incredible restaurants that are really shining a bright light,” she said. “I mean, Bombera is Michelin-recognized. [Dominica] has done an amazing job having such a high-quality restaurant and space, despite the struggles.”
‘We’ve had to step up and be the solution’
Other restaurant owners told The Oaklandside they’ve stopped relying on OPD due to slow response times and understaffing.
Kevyn Johnston, who owns the gastropub Portal near Lake Merritt, said he waited four to five hours for officers to arrive after his restaurant was broken into last April. Since then, he and nearby business owners have worked together to surveil the area for commercial or vehicle break-ins every day. Johnston also encourages his employees to take their breaks outside of the restaurant to have more eyes on the neighborhood.
“We’ve had to step up and be the solution,” Johnston said. “We all encourage each other to hang in there and do our best to keep our small sphere of influence around our businesses as safe as possible.”
Since November 2022, Johnston’s restaurant has been broken into twice. “They stole, at the most, hundreds [in cash], but left thousands in damages,” he said.
After both break-ins, Johnston said he added 16 security cameras to the interior and exterior of the building, outdoor lighting, and a “more sophisticated” security alarm system with a panic button for his employees. He also replaced the front door and locks, which cost him between $500 and $1,000 alone. Johnston said his combined losses add up to $10,000.
Beyond the financial burden, he’s found that the burglaries have taken a mental toll on his patrons.
“I’ve got people that want me to seat them at a particular table so they can keep an eye on their car,” Johnston said. “So the entire time they’re dining in here, the entire experience, they’re worried about their car.”
Survey finds many merchants have stopped reporting crimes
To better understand how businesses are doing, the Koreatown Northgate (KONO) business improvement district sent a questionnaire recently to hundreds of local businesses, including restaurants, bars, retail stores, grocery markets, and arts and entertainment venues. The survey results show that nearly 30% of business owners did not report crimes such as burglaries, robberies, vandalism, and shoplifting to OPD within the past year.
When asked why, one respondent wrote, “Reported some, but response was so slow as to be meaningless.” Someone else wrote, “I stopped reporting crime about 18 months ago, it was a waste of time.” Another response read, “We are busy business owners, we don’t have time to spend hours reporting a crime that will have no resolution.”
The survey also revealed that nearly 80% of business owners said they witnessed or personally experienced car vandalism, which includes graffiti, slashed tires, and other intentional damages to one’s vehicle. Of those people, roughly 22% reported the incident to OPD.
Additionally, almost 85% of business owners said they’ve experienced a customer’s vehicle getting broken into, with 67% of those respondents saying that this occurs one to three times per week on average.
Shari Godinez, the executive director of the KONO community benefit district, said that 110 merchants have submitted responses to the survey, but KONO wants to collect more input before making the full results public.
The deadline to submit responses is this Friday. The survey is also available in Spanish and Chinese. Godinez hopes the resulting data will be used to advocate for policy changes.
Business owners can access the survey here or by reaching out to Godinez at shari@koreatownnorthgate.org.
On a similar note, the Oakland BID Alliance—a collective representing over 3,000 business and property owners across the city’s business improvement districts—has called for several policy changes that it says would improve public safety and boost the local economy.
Its suggestions include revising OPD’s pursuit policy, which currently calls for a pursuit only if there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a person committed a violent crime with or without a firearm; allowing traffic stops for cars with no license plates or illegally tinted windows; funding security camera systems, drones, airplanes, and helicopters to surveil business districts; and hiring more OPD investigators, among many other recommendations.
The Oakland BID Alliance did not propose where funding for these changes would come from.
When asked via email about slow response times to commercial burglaries, OPD’s Media Team did not directly address the issue but stated that its resources are focused on gang violence.
“Gang and group-related shootings still represent the majority of violence in Oakland, and we are leveraging our Ceasefire strategy to focus enforcement efforts on the individuals associated with the most active gangs and groups,” the email read.
The media team also stated that OPD has four “trust building community liaison officers” assigned to Chinatown, Fruitvale, deep East Oakland, and Little Saigon. These officers are tasked with connecting with underrepresented community members and helping them report crimes.
The city acknowledges more needs to be done
The city of Oakland has addressed some but not all of the Oakland BID Alliance’s requests. For example, the Economic and Workforce Development Department (EWD) is collaborating with the City Council to identify community partner organizations within Districts 6 and 7 to develop a security camera grant program.
“These are tools for the business community … to be in direct control and have oversight over the cameras and what information is shared and to make sure that it’s done in a really respectful way, given folks’ sensitivity around surveillance,” said Cristy Johnston Limón, the deputy director of EWD overseeing the business management division.
City leaders also mentioned that the Activate Oakland sponsorship program, which provided up to $10,000 in grants for community events, was another major help for local business owners and residents.
“In my 11 years at the city, I haven’t seen a lot of programs that delivered an announcement into an actual service delivery as quickly as the Activate Oakland program did,” said city spokesperson Sean Maher. “That got announced just a few months ago, and those events are hitting the ground now.”
He also acknowledged that there is always more to be done to support businesses and restaurants impacted by break-ins.
“There is always more work to do, there’s always more information to share, and there’s always folks who haven’t heard about something yet,” Maher said. “That’s kind of a forever priority … making sure that we’re getting more information out, especially to communities and individuals and businesses that don’t have it yet.”
“For folks who may be thinking that the city’s not doing anything: We are,” said Sofia Navarro, interim director of EWD. “We hear them. We hear the concerns. We read the concerns. We’re constantly in communication with our business community, and we’re trying to address those needs as best we can.”
Councilmember Fife said that claims that city leaders are not doing enough to stop crime are “patently false.”
“Our system is broken, and as more people get hungrier, angrier, and more disenfranchised, they will see crime as a way to survive,” Fife said. “Unless we build a robust safety net, those inequities will continue to grow and crime will only worsen.”
Despite the fears some people may have about car break-ins, Fife believes now is not the time to stop patronizing businesses in Oakland.
“Instead of not going out, get creative and find new ways to exist,” she said. “We need these businesses to remain rooted in Oakland so our city can remain beautiful and diverse.”
