Every summer since Mariha Hinojosa Richmond opened her torta shop in Central Texas, her business has been broken into. Last month, La Plancha ATX in East Austin experienced its fourth break-in in three years, but this time Richmond wasn’t going down without a fight.
She told MySA she decided to post on social media about her two most recent break-ins with the hope that maybe something will change. In early July, La Plancha’s main front window was completely smashed and some of its equipment was damaged. Then, a few weeks later in August, a different intruder broke in to steal the restaurant’s POS System, a tablet used to complete customer transactions and manage operations.
“I just decided to put it on blast and say something, because I was so tired of just being quiet and about it,” Richmond said. “We do our due diligence by locking all of our doors. We have our cameras. We have signs that says we don’t carry cash, you know. We try to put everything away so it’s not in visual or any temptations, but I don’t know what is going on in the City of Austin.”
Over the past year, there have been more than 200 reported burglaries/break-ins reported throughout Austin from August 2024 to August 2025, according to Austin Police Department data. Richmond said that at one point she felt like her business was being targeted, until she realized she wasn’t the only one dealing with this city-wide issue…