Welsh spirits brand Au Vodka has made good on a promise to replace stolen stock from a convenience store in Tenby, after a video of an apparent shoplifting incident went viral on social media.
The Swansea-based supplier visited Tenby Stores this week, gifting replacement ready-to-drink vodka cans and a three-litre bottle of vodka to store owners Vince and Fiona Malone.
The offer came after Au’s head of sales for UK and Ireland Tom Smith saw a video shared by Vince Malone on LinkedIn last week.
The video appears to show a woman helping herself to multiple cans of Au RTDs, placing them in her bag before also taking a sandwich from the store.
“After seeing Vince Malone’s LinkedIn post last week of a substantial amount of Au Vodka products being stolen from his store, it was only right that myself and the team went to replace them,” Smith wrote on LinkedIn.
“Retailers are the backbone of Au and a lot of other brands, so it is important we can help and support where necessary,” he added.
Smith came to Tenby to deliver the replacement stock in an Au-branded Lamborghini this week, Fiona Malone told The Grocer.
“They gave us a rather large bottle of Au Vodka with ‘Tenby Stores’ on it, and they gave us some free stock as well,” she said. “It just reassured us and made us feel like it was worth us doing this, and that not everyone is like these people [who shoplift].”
Smith had also taken her children for a ride in the Au Lamborghini, Malone said.
It was “so lovely for someone to be so kind when we’ve just had a really tough time”, she added.
She said her husband Vince had decided to share the video to social media after their store had been repeatedly targeted by shoplifters in recent months.
“This summer holidays, we’d kind of reached our limit,” she said. “We’d had enough of people thinking it was OK to come in and do this. Vince put it on his LinkedIn just to show the brazenness of how this lady thought it was OK just to fill up her bag with whatever she chose, and then just leave the shop without paying.”
Malone said in a previous incident, her husband had been punched in the face by a shoplifter who had described taking a bottle of wine as “a victimless crime”.
“It’s not a victimless crime. It affects me, my family, and it affects everyone,” she said. “Even people shoplifting at Tesco and Sainsbury’s will just put prices up for everybody.”
Tenby Stores was still waiting to hear back from the police about whether the alleged perpetrator had been apprehended and would be charged, she added.
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