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Belly Burgers burglarized by cooking oil thieves

Ironically it wasn’t the Hamburglar that struck Belly Burgers recently but rather a cooking oil thief.

Belly Burgers (5740 Geary) is known for its fresh cooked Kobe beff burgers and fries, and that yields a lot of cooking grease. After they finish with the oil, they take it out back and store it in containers so it can be recycled.

The recycling is taken on by third party companies like Got Grease, who will come pick up the grease from participating restaurants, paying the owner in the process.

But Belly’s effort to be green is attracting thieves, who are making off with the grease and selling it on the black market. The restaurant shares a wall with a small, metered parking lot, making it easier for thieves to access their back area.

“There is a black market for yellow grease now as it’s sometimes called,” said Andrew Pannell of Dogpatch Biofuels of San Francisco. “Independent people will steal it here and there and use it for their own vehicles, diesels converted to burn vegetable oil.” [CBS SF]

Used cooking oil prices have increased from 6 cents to 50 cents a gallon, making it attractive to thieves. Which means when the recyclers come to collect, there’s no grease for them to pick up.

Got Grease collects the cooking oil, which is then turned locally into biodiesel. They partner with San Francisco’s Dogpatch Biofuels to offer Bay Area residents a station to fill their biodiesel-fueled cars with the locally collected alternative fuel.

David Levinson of Got Grease says the thefts are cutting into his bottom line, and that it makes it challenging to sign up new restaurants who are already apprehensive about the extra effort required to recycle their grease.

“It’s tough to expand your business and get new restaurants when you’re going to the restaurant and there’s no cooking oil for you to collect,” Levinson said.

Thanks to RichmondSFBlog reader Gideon for the tip.

Sarah B.

[via CBS SF]

6 Comments

  1. Pretty soon they’ll steal your house front gates. WHEN are the powers going to clamp down on the thieves and buyers? as usual, when it’s totally out of hand.

  2. Someone should instead steal their recipes for burgers, destroy them, and replace them with whatever Bill’s uses around the corner. Yecch.

    Still sucks to have your shit stolen, though.

  3. Recyclables are valuable, and the sooner people like Got Grease and Recology act on that, the better. Introducing locking blue bins would result in an immediate improvement in the neighborhood.

  4. I get the impression from the recycling thieves that they are helping out the extended family. They are obviously not living on the street or down-and-out. What broke my heart was an older woman on Geary street going through the garbage. She was not well dressed and it was freezing cold – for her, it was a matter or survival. Our priorities as a society are all skewed, Our police and representatives seem incapable or unwilling to do anything. Maybe that’s why the occupy movement has not died so easily.

  5. Maybe instead of occupying a park down near the Ferry Building, we need to take our protest to where it’ll count. How about occupying City Hall?

  6. Maybe so Tom. I’m just not sure that Occupy is not creating more problems than it is fixing…

Comments are closed.