Community support after pizza shop cash crash

AFTER McCrae Street pizza place Luchiano’s was ram-raided about two weeks ago the business has recovered quickly with the support of staff and locals.

Owner Juliette Kabalan said she was made aware of the break-in at about 7.30am on Saturday, 15 April and arrived to find a broken front door and windows as well as a missing cash register draw and other equipment.

Despite the chaos, Luchiano’s managed to open at 5pm that evening.

“I’ve got a great team,” said Ms Kabalan. “Windows were done by three o’clock.

“My nephews came down straight away, and then their mum and sister came down and were helping me clean up while my team prepped the shop.

“After the police were in here and did everything they had to do, that’s when we thought okay now let’s just get it done.

“Staff members who had kids and didn’t have anyone to look after them were coming in and checking if we needed anything to eat, if we needed coffee.

“Others were helping out, just clearing the glass was a lot of work.

“I said to my team we’re going to get this done and we’re going to open tonight.

“We’re not going to let them break us. We’re just going to keep going.”

Ms Kabalan said it was lucky the store was hit was at the bottom of the window, so most of the glass went towards the floor.

“We had to be really, really accurate with our cleaning to make sure there was no pieces of glass in anything,” said Ms Kabalan.

Following the break-in, Ms Kabalan said the community support has been amazing.

“We had a guy come in, and he’s a regular, but he’s like ‘can you add $10 to the order?’” she said.

“Emails from customers saying ‘we’re so sorry for what’s happened, we’ll definitely be in this week to help support’.

“Even people walking past. ‘Do you need help? Are you guys okay?’ Bendigo locals are great. It was just uplifting.”