NYC restaurants hit back at dine-and-dashers with social media shame: ‘Nothing that police can do’

Don’t fork around with these New Yorkers!

Pushed-to-the-limit NYC restaurateurs are faced with another battle in the fight for their financial lives — a growing scourge of dine-and-dash incidents.

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Britney Cariño, owner of Talavera Cantina in The Bronx’s trendy Mott Haven neighborhood, rushed to the restaurant’s social accounts last May, after a table of customers walked out on their $112 tab.

The alleged terrible trio sauntered into the Mexican cocktail bar on Cinco de Mayo — the busiest day of the month, Cariño said. They ordered tacos, chips and guacamole and four frozen margaritas.

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“One of the women, she takes the check tray and she actually puts it under her purse,” the second-generation business owner told The Post. “They look around again and then that’s when they leave.”

Appalled over the fryjacking — her first in three years running Talavera — Cariño said she aired the diners’ dirty laundry on Instagram with a screen grab of the footage, letting them know that if they paid up, everything would be fine.“Dine-and-dashes have always existed, but the fact that now we can utilize social media…..you kind of bring back shame,” said Britney Cariño (pictured outside of Talavera Cantina).

“My first instinct wasn’t to call the police because honestly, sometimes there’s nothing that police can do,” she said.

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Fahmida Sultana, who Truong said left his staff only $6 as a tip before sauntering out the door, welched on the supposed deal — leaving him with little recourse but to air his frustrations in Instagram.

“We trusted this person to come in to record a video and I feel like she scammed us,” Truong lamented in the clip, posted last November.

“She changed her username or deleted her account,” said one viewer, while another wrote, “Time to call out all the so-called influencers.”

It was only after his video that she finally responded — with a scathing and since-deleted review.

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The phenomenon has rippled beyond city limits, with restaurants around the tri-state area tackling the problem on their own. Erin ONeill’s Pub and Grill in Poughkeepsie tried the same tack recently — posting footage of a female customer sneakily removing her card from the check presenter, before walking off with both her plastic and the booklet.

“Anyone recognize our Dine & Dashers?” they inquired in the caption, later noting in an update their thanks for the help in identifying the culprits.Pei Chung is seen in Brooklyn Criminal Court Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023, in Brooklyn, New York. Gregory P. Mango

Then there are the Gotham grub spots that don’t even use social media — but instead lean on a good, old-fashioned Wall of Shame.

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Whether intentional or the result of a misunderstanding, restaurant owners certainly have the right to call the cops — theft of service is technically punishable in NYC by up to a year in jail. But a $100 restaurant loss, experts say, tends to get buried in a system overwhelmed by serious crime.

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When asked for dine-and-dash arrest totals over the past five years, an NYPD spokesperson told The Post that the Department doesn’t track this data to that “level of specificity.”

As hospitality lawyer Andreas Koutsoudakis put it to The Post, “Walking out on a $300 check is the same class of crime as jumping a turnstile” — a relatively minor offense.

“On paper, it carries up to a year, but in practice it’s nothing,” Koutsoudakis explained.

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For instance, with independent restaurants typically clocking a pre-tax profit margin of 5%, they’d need around $2,000 in sales to generate a $112 pre-tax profit — equivalent to Talavera’s skipped check.

The best course of action for victimized vittle vendors, per Herrman, is to retain surveillance footage, preserve the receipt, record employee testimony, and make a “timely police report.”

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“When multiple restaurants report essentially the same conduct by the same individual, investigators potentially have a pattern rather than a single isolated event,” Herrman said. “

Plus, it lets “the public know this is not the community you’re going to be doing this to,” said Koutsoudakis.

(*) Full article: https://nypost.com/2026/09/28/lifestyle/nyc-restaurants-find-new-way-to-hit-back-against-dine-and-dashers/