Toilet brushes, cigarette machines and heart-shaped cocktail glasses – they are all things that have been stolen from Aberdeen bars down the years.
The gallery of purloined goods has been revealed after celebrity chef Michel Roux Jr recently rued the theft of a frog ornament from London restaurant Le Gavroche.
The frog, made out of cutlery, had been a table decoration since 1989 and valued at as much as £7,000.
But Roux Jr’s light-fingered London thief has nothing on those in the Granite City, where the strangest of items go walkabout, according to veterans of the Aberdeen hospitality scene.
“I remember when I used to work in [Langstane Place pub] Boozy Cow, we had meat hooks hanging from the ceiling,” says Jamie Kerrison, a bartender in Aberdeen for 15 years.
“We caught people trying to take a couple away with them one night. That was weird.”
Why all the missing toilet brushes?
A survey of other long-standing local bar staff reveals a rogues list of bizarre bar thefts.
A vintage butter churn taken from under the noses of staff at a city cocktail bar. A cigarette machine removed from a pub by a bold man in a boiler suit.
Not to mention loo brushes nicked from the toilets of The Craftsman Company on Guild Street.
“Ha!” laughs Craftsman general manager Garry Russell when asked about the missing bog brushes. “Those are the least of it.”
According to Garry, toilet brush theft is common in the bar trade, though he can’t think why.
Not even the cost-of-living crisis can be blamed as the thefts happened as much in the past as they do now.
A lot of glassware goes missing, though most bars pass that off as wastage. And most branded drinks glasses are supplied by the big brewers and distillers, who have deep pockets for that sort of thing.
“You try to get the majority of glasses from the drinks companies,” says Garry. “And the branded ones, they go pretty quickly.”
‘That was the opposite of funny’
Down the road from The Craftsman, staff at the Krakatoa bar have had bigger issues with stolen glassware.
“A few years ago, we got these beautiful heart-shaped pint jars for a strawberry daiquiri cocktail,” says Krakatoa bartender Craig Adams. “We bought about 200 of them because we thought that would last us forever.
“Within a year every single one had been stolen. We’ve got one left that we now use as an ornament.”
Fortunately, the glassware wasn’t expensive, and Craig says its disappearance was more of a nuisance than a crippling loss. But not every theft can be brushed off so lightly.
About eight years ago, Krakatoa – which regularly hosts live music – had to fork out £5,000 for a new house drum kit after someone stole its tom-toms.
“That was the opposite of funny,” says Craig.
“If anybody sees two, sparkly purple toms, then those are ours, and we’d like the person’s name and address.”
The return of the dear departed
Andy Stewart, who over a two-decade career in hospitality has worked for numerous Aberdeen cocktail bars, has a rare feel-good theft story.
“It was in The Tippling House and we had these beautiful absinthe taps,” says Andy, talking about the taps on the glass fountains used to dispense the anise-flavoured spirit.
“One of the two little taps on it went missing one night. We thought, well we can put this down to experience.
“But a few weeks later, the tap arrived in a box posted back to us with a lovely letter from a guy saying he had been out on a stag night and these had somehow ended up going back home with him.”
The incident stayed with Andy because it was a rare instance of something stolen from a bar coming back.
Usually, it is never seen again, making Andy – and his fellow bartenders – almost indifferent to theft.
“I mean, when you’re working in a bar things get nicked all the time,” he says.
“It’s frustrating, but you have to take it on the chin.”
