‘This one hurts’: Restaurant co-owned by E-40 burglarized twice in one day

Oakland restaurant the Lumpia Company suffered “significant loss” after burglars raided the business on Sunday and took off with electronics, equipment and frozen lumpia from the kitchen freezer, KRON-TV reports. 

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Chef Alex Retodo, who co-owns the Lumpia Company with Bay Area rapper E-40, shared an Instagram post on Sunday that included surveillance footage of the burglary. In the video, two individuals are shown carrying equipment in the restaurant’s dining room apparently outside of business hours. Retodo asked for public help identifying the two people in the video. 

“We won’t lie—this one hurts,” Retodo wrote on Instagram. “… Incidents like this make us think twice. When people steal from a small business, they’re not just taking equipment—they’re taking from the employees, the customers, the community events, and the dreams behind it all.” 

Retodo told KRON that the thieves burglarized his business twice on Sunday morning, taking off with thousands of dollars’ worth of items, including a laptop and a kitchen blender used to prepare the restaurant’s signature lumpia dish. The total financial loss from the burglary is unknown. SFGATE reached out to Retodo’s and E-40’s publicists for comment but did not hear back by publication. The Oakland Police Department was not readily available.  

Among the stolen goods taken from the business was unspecified gear needed to screen upcoming World Cup games at the Lumpia Company. Retodo said that the burglary couldn’t have come at “a worse time.” 

“My partner called me on his jet and said, ‘Hey, what happened?’ He’s like, ‘I saw the news.’ I said, ‘E-40, we are going to be OK,’” Retodo told KRON. “We wanted to open with a bang today, playing the [World Cup] games, but we had to turn customers away. We had a party outside; made it happen, but it wasn’t the same.” 

The stolen items will also affect future restaurant events like karaoke, movie nights and comedy shows, which will be postponed until the equipment to host those events is replaced, Retodo wrote on Instagram. 

The recent burglary won’t impact the Lumpia Company’s food operations, Retodo wrote on Instagram. He thanked his customers for their support and added that he plans to rebuild and be “stronger than ever.”