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REISING'S SUNRISE Bakery Inc., which filed for bankruptcy Sept. 27, has reached an agreement to sell most of its assets to its chief competitor, G.H. Leidenheimer Baking Co. Ltd, according to documents filed in federal bankruptcy court.
Though officials at neither company will comment on negotiations, disclosure statements filed Oct. 20 indicate Reising's plan of reorganization calls for Leidenheimer's to take over all of its customer accounts and equipment in exchange for a fixed percentage of Leidenheimer's sales.
The actual price will depend on how much Leidenheimer's revenues climb as a result of the sale, with a minimum purchase price of $250,000 and a maximum price of $700,000. The deal, which is contingent upon court approval by Jan. 15, 1990, would effectively put an end to Reising's, which has been selling French bread to local restaurants and grocery stores since 1885.
Other bakers, who have been struggling through a downturn in recent years, greeted the news with enthusiasm. ``I don't see where Leidenheimer's can handle all the business,'' says Claude T. Dupuis Jr., president of Angelo Gendusa Bakery Inc., which has picked up 10 former Reising's accounts since the Chapter 11 filing. "I think there will be enough to go around for everybody."
Interviews with local bakers, as well as a review of court records, show just how grim the bread business has been in the 1980s. Long considered a friendly industry with a stable customer base, the local bakery scene has been battered in recent years by the loss of one traditional source of revenue after another, and in the past 12 months a bitter price war has erupted which has strained relations among the city's five remaining French bread bakeries.
Creating the most havoc has been the rise of the in-store bakery in local supermarkets, a popular trend bolstered in the 1980s by a growing emphasis among retailers on one-stop shopping. One local baker, who asked not to be identified, says his sales plunged 38 percent and his profits disappeared when his supermarket clients began...