Anger at £1,450 pub kitchen theft

Professional chef’s knives worth £1,000 and about £450 worth of food were stolen, and hundreds of pounds worth of damage done, during a break-in at The Dolphin, in High Street, Littlehampton, in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Katie Smith, who runs the pub with partner Ellie Boiling, said business was hard enough at the moment, with an average of 29 pubs closing every week across the country, without having to deal with the heartache and inconvenience of thieves.

“We work 24/7, just to stay afloat. It’s just to keep a roof over our heads, we aren’t even making any money.”

“It’s just so annoying when you put everything you have into making something work, and then someone thinks they can come and do this,” said Katie.

CCTV footage shows a man going round the back of the pub at about 3.30am, and walking away at 4.50am carrying a large, white holdall.

Katie said she didn’t know what had happened until about 11am that day, when she went to open the kitchen. The windows had been smashed, scattering glass everywhere.

“It’s a commercial kitchen, so now we need to do a deep clean. We can’t serve food until that’s done, so we’re losing trade as well,” said Katie.

“Even the food he hasn’t taken, he has left out, so we have had to throw away, because there could be glass in it.”

Things had been made worse by the fact that the freezers were full in preparation for a new menu that chef Ellie had been working on.

Said Katie: “The kitchen is Ellie’s baby, and she is heartbroken. The knives, she had been collecting for the last 20 years.”

It was about this time last year that someone broke into the upstairs of the pub, where the couple live, and stole money from their rooms, while they worked the bar.

“That was horrible, knowing someone had been in our home,” added Katie.

“But this was just as bad, because we were asleep upstairs. We feel violated.”

The thief didn’t get any further than the kitchen, she said, because the rest of the building is alarmed.

“The kitchen was so secure that we didn’t think it needed to be alarmed. We have had one fitted now,” said Katie.

Anyone with information, or who may have seen anyone near the pub at around the time of the burglary with a large, white bag, is asked to call Littlehampton police on 0845 60 70 999.