Not quite a feta-ccompli Burglar busts into cheese shop, doesn't steal edam thing By: Maggie Macintosh Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Jul. 31, 2018

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This article was published 30/07/2018 (2244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The owners at Fromagerie Bothwell are cheesed someone broke into their business.

So much so, co-owner Jean-Marc Champagne said the Winnipeg shop is offering a year of free made-in-Manitoba cheese in exchange for the identification of the suspect who rummaged through its tills and fridges in the early hours Tuesday.

"If anyone knows this gentleman, if we’re able to identify him and lead to an arrest, then they would get themselves some free cheese for the year, courtesy of Fromagerie Bothwell," Champagne told the Free Press, hours after the break-in.

Champagne said he woke up to the chime of his phone around 12:30 a.m., to see a handful of missed call messages from an alarm company and alerts from the shop’s security cameras. The live footage showed about six police officers inside the shop at 136 Provencher Blvd., he said.

"I knew something was up, so I got dressed and raced over there."

It appears as though the burglar pried the back door open using a crow bar, Champagne said, adding it would’ve taken "quite a bit of effort" to open the door because it’s a brand-new, heavy-duty model installed when Bothwell took over the space three months ago.

A man wearing a baseball cap, glasses, tracksuit and sneakers was captured on the security cameras sneaking around the business.

The black-and-white footage shows the man searched the storefront’s empty tills and peered into the cheese fridges in the kitchen before running off; the fromagerie doesn’t keep cash on site, the co-owner said.

Police said nothing was stolen, but the back door frame was damaged.

"I guess we didn’t have any of the cheese varieties he liked, so he took off empty-handed," Champagne said.

There were more than 5,100 break-and-enter crimes reported to city police last year, according to the Winnipeg Police Service 2017 annual statistical report.

Four break-and-enters — instances where a suspect broke into a private building, whether they stole something or not — occured in the St. Boniface area between noon Monday and noon Tuesday alone, Const. Rob Carver said.

"From my experience, that doesn’t strike me as an unusual number," he said, adding the type of crime is "absolutely" a frequent one in the city.

“I guess we didn’t have any of the cheese varieties he liked, so he took off empty-handed’ – Jean-Marc Champagne, co-owner of Fromagerie Bothwell

While happy nothing appears to have been stolen, Champagne said he’s also surprised.

"We’ve got at least 20 or 30 cheeses on hand at all times. We’ve got a plethora of other great local products as well; there had to be something in the store he would’ve liked."

Blocks of smoked gouda, jalapeño, muenster, old cheddar and at least a dozen other cheeses were among the items the burglar ignored, he said. The shop also sells local jams, sauces and tortilla chips.

The Fromagerine Bothwell co-owner said he thinks the alarm scared the intruder away. "I think maybe he panicked. Who knows what state he was in? It’s hard to tell what was going through the gentleman’s mind.

"We’re just happy no one was here at the time."

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @macintoshmaggie

Maggie Macintosh
Reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Winnipeg Free Press. Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

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