[m21sniper]

My old man owned 3 bars and a nightclub (over the years) after he got off the police force.

I worked at all of them, in pretty much all capacities at one time or another.

Please do tell me about the 'restaurant business', since i am so totally clueless. If we were talking about architecture firms, you'd have me, i don't know squat about them, but i do know quite a little something about employees and the bar business.

As i said, hire better people and TREAT THEM WELL. A certain amount of theft is going to occur in any business, but this is no damn excuse for simply closing your doors and screwing every employee you have. When my old man closed his bars and moved to the automotive business nobody stole anything of any significant value off of him because he treated his employees well and kept them well informed. (in fact many of those same former employees still come to him to buy cars to this day)
Were some ashtrays stolen? Sure, who gives a crap, none of the liquor was. He gave quite a lot of it away though, to valued long time employees.

When you treat people like animals, they will act like them. Amazing that.