LAVALLETTE – You can have your cake and eat it too, but you have to pay for it first.
That is what a group of men recently learned when they were identified as stealing a full sheet of crumb cake from the Colonial Bakery.
The bakery’s crumb cake is pretty popular but the owners and staff hardly expected any gang of cake thieves to enter their establishment and steal a freshly baked sheet of it on the morning of July 16.
The crumb cake bandits were eventually identified thanks to input from social media. The bandits opened a door and took the crumb cake which they have since paid for.
The owners posted surveillance video of the caper a day after the heist.
The video reveals the faces of two men who peered in and then opened a screen door. They proceeded to take the cake. A third man, possibly a look out, was observed in the background filming the dastardly deed. A fourth man was also seen according to the owners of the bakery.
The bakery sought the help of the public seeking answers as to who these men were and how they should pay for their heinous crime.
One option proposed was to make them eat an entire pan of crumb cake at one sitting. Many social media responders recommended they file a report with the borough police.
A plea deal came about after the men were identified. Colonial Bakery’s owners told them to come back to the scene of the crime and pay for the cake. That plus posting a public apology video. If they did that, the owners wouldn’t press charges.
On the morning of July 19, the owners posted an update, stating that three of bandits had come forward, paid for the cake and apologized privately.
The bakery owners posted thanks to those who responded and who helped bring the Crumb Cake Crooks to justice.
“We wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that shared, commented, and helped us find the thieves,” they said. “To see our small business, gather so much support from the local community (and beyond!) is humbling. We know the barrier island is a special place where we watch out for each other and this was yet another example of exactly that.”
The owners wrote that they would “never condone theft of any kind and did take the situation seriously. We did try to take a lighthearted approach with our funny poll of consequences. Sometimes you just need to make lemonade out of lemons, right?”
“We made our best attempt to solve this issue the way we felt was right for us. Thank you again to everyone for the support and help and we feel lucky that we were able to resolve this issue. The additional publicity is our silver lining in an otherwise ‘sticky situation’ – sorry just had to get in one more pun,” they wrote.
The bakery owners are still waiting for the apology video by the Crumb Cake Crooks. The case of the stolen crumb cake remains a breaking story with more details to be revealed.
