The owner of L’Oven Farm Fresh Foods in West Kelowna has lost hundreds of pounds of food and thousands of dollars thanks to a thief who has targeted her restaurant multiple times.
“As a small business person I feel defeated,” Patricia Guest said.
L’Oven Fresh Farm Foods restaurant is located in the 2500 block of Main Street in West Kelowna’s downtown.
Guest said the restaurant’s cooler, located outside at the back of the building in a fenced compound, has been broken into three times in two months.
Guest said the culprit stole the most expensive items each time, including a $389 wheel of Parmesan cheese and $200 pieces of organic prime rib.
“He had completely ignored the fruit and vegetable side and went for all the cheeses, the meats, the hamburgers, the sausages,” she said. “All our really expensive stuff.”
Guest estimates she’s lost about $6,000 worth of food in all three robberies.
Surveillance footage shows the same man taking food out of the cooler on three separate occasions.
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Police are investigating but so far no arrests have been made.
Guest said she’s puzzled as to what someone would do with all that stolen food.
“When the first 400 lbs. of food went missing, I told my son to look on Facebook for a big party with free food,” she said.
At least three other businesses in the same commercial complex have been hit by thieves in recent months.
West Kelowna’s mayor is aware of the problem.
“Of course we are concerned,” Doug Findlater said. “We’d like to see the RCMP give this area some attention and I understand they are aware of it.”
Findlater said the area does attract transients. The nearby Westbank Transit Exchange has also brought some problem activity to the area, he added.
“While transit and the transit exchange is an absolutely necessary amenity, it has brought a few people into the area,” he said. “And it comes direct from Queensway, and Queensway is a problem that may be having an impact on us.”
Findlater hopes the addition of two more RCMP officers, authorized by council earlier this year, will help crime-prone areas and the affected businesses.
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