The owner of a supermarket in the Plateau has had to resort to extreme measures to stop cheese burglars.
For the past three years, Frank Henot, who owns Intermarché Boyer at 1000 Mont-Royal Ave. E, has been fighting to keep his high-end Parmesan from being stolen.
In just one week, Henot said more than 50 per cent of his inventory was stolen.
At $50 per kilogram, he believes the culprits are likely restaurant owners.
As a store owner, he said he expects to lose 1 per cent of his inventory to theft – but Parmesan theft has become so commonplace he was forced to store the cheese behind the counter.
He also hired a security guard costing him $50,000 a year - worth it, he said, because even with the guard, Henot claims $75,000 of his stock was pilfered last week.
Henot said he’s frustrated, because despite calling the police when he spots a shoplifter, the thieves are never caught.
“I stopped the lady outside the store with more than 500 bucks, just the cheese. And when we stop the people, often they say, yes, we sell to the different restaurants in Montreal,” said Henot. “We spoke to the police about it, but we don’t have answer and we don’t have the solution.”
Henot said he's stopped selling other luxury food items at his store, because those items were also being stolen, forcing him to raise prices as a result.
Henot said he hopes he doesn’t have to stop selling the gourmet cheese.
