Over the past couple days, a familiar Upper East Side thrift store took an unusual approach to a problem its owner says has dogged both of his shops since the day the first one opened. In the span of two days, Upper East Side Thrift Shop put up two separate Instagram posts calling out shoplifters caught on camera. What the store did not expect was how fast those posts would come back around.
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Soon after the posts went up, relatives of both people surfaced. In one case, the aunt of an alleged shoplifter reached out to the store. In the other, a woman’s son got in touch to say the person in the photo was his mother, and that he would come in and pay for what she had taken. “You’re not going to believe it. We posted two of them in two days, and both of them we already found,” owner George Khodzhayev told East Side Feed.Khodzhayev says the store is sitting on a mountain of similar footage, hundreds of photos and videos of people walking out without paying, but that it only goes public when there is no doubt about what happened. “We don’t post pictures unless we have 1,000% proof,” he said.
Upper East Side Thrift Shop first opened in 2023 in the former Glaser’s Bakery space at 1670 First Avenue (between 87th and 88th streets), and has since added a second store at 1720 Second Avenue (between 89th and 90th streets). Khodzhayev runs both with his wife, Anastasia Akodis.
Part of what frustrates him is the assumption that a thrift store is fair game. He says people seem to treat the merchandise as free because so much of it arrives as donated goods. The reality, he says, is a stack of bills that would look familiar to any small-business owner. He puts rent at roughly $38,000 between his two stores, on top of employees, utilities, and the hours he and his wife put in themselves without drawing a paycheck. “They think everything is coming for free,” he said.
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The shoplifting at his stores is not limited to any one kind of person, according to Khodzhayev, who says he has caught customers of every age and background, including, on one occasion, a woman in her seventies in a mink coat. “Now I know everybody steals. Rich, poor,” he said. It happens at both locations, he says, and it happens just about every day.For all the aggravation, Khodzhayev says the store still tries to lead with generosity. It keeps a free rack outside and gives clothing to anyone who walks in and says they cannot afford to pay, no questions asked. He says the store does not automatically call police over theft, reserving that for cases above about $1,000. And the underlying mission has not changed since 2023: proceeds still go to families with children in Ukraine.
Follow the store on Instagram at @ues_thrift_shop_ny
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