Stolen gourmet steaks and seafood hightailed off to Bronx bodegas
nypost.comsharply rising prices retailers — and their customers — are facing as inflation is stuck at 40-year highs and the smash-and-grab antics seen across the country as some say light-touch policing is encouraging theft.As for inflation, it’s so off the charts that tony grocer Citarella is now selling crab meat for $99 a pound — up from around $35 just six months ago.And as for the thefts?
Some stores aren’t even stocking the highest-dollar items anymore — because the stuff is ripe for shoplifters.“I am not going near that stuff,” Victor Colello, Morton Williams’ director of meat and fish buying tells The Post of the ever-more-pricey crab. “It’s too expensive and will just sit on the shelves or walk out the door.”Citarella owner Joe Gurrera tells The Post that seafood prices have been high for months.
At his stores, wild lump crabmeat is $99 a pound, wild stone crab claws and lobster meat is $89.99 a pound and wild Nantucket Bay scallops are $79 a pound.He cites the supply-chain issues that are gumming up the works across the world — and helping to drive up prices: fish and other seafood stuck on ships in port and soaring demand amid staffing problems.
Higher gas prices add to transportation costs and trickle down to the sticker price, too.At Morton Williams, Colello calculates that an 8-ounce lobster tail now costs $32 a pound, wholesale — which would be around $60 a pound retail.
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