Outrageous footage shows an alleged dine and dash family who supposedly legged it from a restaurant to avoid paying close to £400.
The diners racked up £390 at the La Banca Italian restaurant in Selsey, West Sussex. Fuming restaurant owner Neil Kimber released the footage saying the group, which included men, women and children, needed to be “named and shamed” after the incident on Saturday night.
Neil said: “They said the food was rubbish and they weren’t paying before pulling out a wedge of about £1,000 in cash and throwing down £60 after I said the drinks they had couldn’t have been rubbish. They knew what they were doing.”
READ MORE: Dine and dash couple hunted by cops after fleeing restaurant selling £9.95 burritos
Trouble had started earlier in the evening when the group showed up with two extra people for their booking of eight. The table, which included six children, then munched on carbonara and ragu as their bill mounted.
Neil said the hefty bill would have paid for a “£400 bill from the butcher across the road”. Furious, he said: “It’s b*****ds like you who will bring a small business like us down.”
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(Image: Eddie Mitchell)
Neil added: “We are a family restaurant and we value our reviews. All our food is spot on and made from local produce.” The frustrated restaurant owner said incidents like this were becoming more common in the area.
Despite the incident, Neil said he had not reported it to police, saying authorities had not really acted on similar incidents in the past. He said to the Mail Online: “We don’t want to charge our customers up front, but it’s getting worse… The dine and dash craze will ruin businesses.
“Selsey is only a sleepy town and we’re being taken advantage of. It’s just getting constant. We are a family restaurant and we value our reviews.” Restaurant owners have previously called out people leaving without paying for their people, saying dine and dash incidents were becoming a problem this year.
Andy Sparsis, from The Fish Factory in Worthing, Kent, told the BBC in June that because VAT was high, food prices were “extortionate”.
Andy said dine and dash incident had been getting worse. The restaurant owner, who is also chairman of the Worthing Hospitality Federation, said: “Eating out is now an expensive experience, so it’s worth people – certainly the criminals – putting the effort into eating a lot of food and running because they get a lot back from what they do, and it’s hitting us hard.”
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