The Wilton House of Pizza was broken into at some point in the overnight hours of Monday or Tuesday.
“It’s pretty unfortunate, but we’ll keep the course,” DJ Garcia said in an interview Tuesday.
Garcia, who owns the Wilton House of Pizza with his wife Amy, said a long-time customer called him at 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning to tell him someone had broken in through the front door window.
“As he was driving by, he happened to look over, and noticed the door looked a little funny,” Garcia said. “He pulled in and saw the glass had been broken.”
Garcia said the thief had been able to open the front door through the broken glass and then had broken the lock to the door on his office, where they stole some amount of cash. Garcia said he hadn’t determined how much had been taken yet.
“They went right for my office and went through there, taking whatever they thought would benefit them,” Garcia said.
Garcia said the thief left several tools behind, including a screwdriver, wrench, pocket utility tool and a glove.
The restaurant was able to open Tuesday and run its usual business hours, which Garcia credited to the customer who notified him of the break-in so early in the morning.
“He saved us from the heartache of losing business because it probably wouldn’t have been noticed until the manager got there at 9 a.m., or maybe not even until she went to unlock the front of the restaurant at 10 a.m.,” Garcia said. “I was able to get it dealt with before anyone showed up and have us ready to go for opening as usual.”
Garcia said he’ll be replacing the door with a metal security door with no windows, and installing a security system.
The security system was an upgrade he planned to add eventually, Garcia said, but it had fallen down the to-do list as the restaurant has just undergone a massive renovation.
The Wilton House of Pizza closed for two weeks at the end of December and into January for an almost complete overhaul of the interior, which included new electrical work and lighting, new flooring and ceiling tiles, countertops, chairs and tables, and updating their equipment to new high-efficiency models.
While the building has been a restaurant since the 1980s, Garcia said, it was originally a laundromat and then office spaces. The Garcia’s bought the building six years ago and had built it up to the point he was ready to give the building a facelift.
“The town of Wilton hasn’t seen a lot of updating in a long time,” Garcia said. “We feel like we’re trying to put our intentions into the town, and hope that other people start doing the same thing.”
Which makes this incident the more disheartening, he said. But it’s also provided a great deal of support from his customers, many of whom gave donations to the restaurant on Tuesday.
“There’s been a lot of kind words and appreciation for what we do,” Garcia said. “In the restaurant business, often you hear more bad than good, and it’s been great to hear about people’s positive experiences with us.”