Bakery Heists : The Two-Minute Raids | M6 | 66 minutes

For a little over a year, bakeries have been thieves’ new favorite target.

It makes sense: bakeries are among the last shops where customers still pay in cash. The method is almost always the same. Christophe Drouhet, a baker in the Vosges region of eastern France, knows this all too well: he has been burglarized four times.

The thieves, usually a team of two in balaclavas, break in at night and, in under two minutes flat, empty the automatic cash machines that take payments and give change on their own. The haul often runs to several thousand euros in cash, because bakers don’t empty the machines every night: it’s too time-consuming. Eastern France, the Paris region, Vendée, Toulouse… no part of the country has been spared. We counted nearly a hundred burglaries since the start of the year. These machines, which spread widely during Covid, are not the safes people might imagine. The thieves, often very young, can force them open in seconds with nothing more than a screwdriver.

So how are bakers now trying to protect themselves? Who are these young burglars? What do they really risk? And have manufacturers improved the security of their machines since?