Local News

What Really Happens To Cars In SF Valet Parking

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―

With space tight in downtown San Francisco, valet parking is a fact of life here.  But did you ever wonder what happens to your car after you hand over the keys? CBS 5 Investigates has been looking into what happens in one popular nightspot.

Welcome to North Beach, where there are lots of Italian restaurants, lots of people, lots of cars with virtually no parking spaces. Here, the valet is king, and he gets to drive off with your car.

"Someone comes and gets my car and they park my car for me," one woman told CBS 5 Investigates.

"Some places do valet their cars and park them in and around the neighborhood," said another.

And when we asked a third he said: "Park it, immediately, then bring it back. Is that not what happens?"

Well not always.  CBS 5 Investigates witnessed a valet takes a customer's Toyota SUV over Telegraph Hill and down to a waterfront parking lot, where you'd think it would stay. But a short time later, a group of valets pile back into that car and go for a ride. Not to the restaurant, but rather into a nearby alley, where they all jump out.

What's the reason behind that?  Well the valets have to find spaces to park all those cars. So CBS 5 discovered they're actually driving some of those cars clear out of North Beach, up and down steep hills and down to the water, where they finally park the cars in a lot on the waterfront roughly three-quarters of a mile away.  And how do the valets get back to North Beach to pick up their next car? Well we found their solution: In some cases they just use your car.

And not just once: One Saturday night, four valets get into a car already parked at the lot for a ride back to North Beach.  But they don't get dropped off at the restaurant, since customers might see. So they drop them off at a familiar alley a half block up the hill.  The valets then run down the sidewalk to pick up another batch of cars.  In fact CBS 5 witnessed nine round trips for the Toyota 4-Runner over a 2-hour period.

"What are you guys doing with the cars here?" we asked the valets on one of those stops in the alley. "This is a client's car, yes?"

Their answer: No. It's rented.  

Tell that to the customer who owns it. CBS 5 approached him a short time later after he and his family finished their meal at North Beach restaurant Bocce's and explained what happened to his vehicle during dinner.

"Huh! I'll have to ask about that," the owner said.

And we also wondered what the owner of a Porsche SUV might think if he saw his vehicle parked on Grant Street picking up a pizza.  Evidently valets get hungry on Saturday nights too and what's better than a personal Porsche pizza delivery guy, bringing dinner down to the parking lot.

It's not exactly what Max Fattahian thought was happening with his Porsche.

"They're getting a takeout with my car? A pizza takeout? That's an expensive pizza delivery car," Fattahian said.  "The guy buys his pizza and a whole bunch of them in the car and he's going all over the city. It's unacceptable."

Bocce restaurant owner Welat Yuksel agrees.  "It's not okay to use customers' cars, it's not right" he told us after watching the video CBS 5 Investigates shot.

He said s it's all a surprise to him. "The pictures are clear there, it's very embarrassing," he said.

So we tried to talk to this man: Nurullah Zira, the owner of that valet parking service, but he didn't want to talk.

"You have no right to do what you are doing right now…You are interfering with my business," Zira said.

Interfering with his business? Our videotaping, a criminal matter?

"I am going to call the police department," he insisted.

And as restaurant patrons watched, the SFPD arrived, but not with the answer Zira wanted.

"My sergeant says you have every right to film, whatever you like to do." The officer said. 

The parking company owner did tell us he would come by for an interview. But then he cancelled. Later, he did claim to us that he was unaware of his employees using customers' cars for shuttles and he plans to discipline those who did. He says he provides two shuttle cars for his valets and on the night we talked to him outside the restaurant, his employees should have been using them.

As for the Mr. Fattahian Porsche owner, he said "The pizza can be delivered by the pizza company, not by my car. I'm not giving my car key to nobody."

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