German bookstore owner: Readers truly have excellent taste

We posted a few months ago about a bookstore-restaurant-bakery in the works in Chicago, and now we have something for international readers or abstemious ones.

The small town of Bad Sooden-Allendorf, in north-central Germany, was about to lose its last two bakeries about five years ago.

At the same time, the local bookstore’s owner, Wolfgang Frühauf, was starting to stress over his own finances.

Enter an unlikely but now-thriving partnership: Frühauf cleared some space at his shop for one of the bakers, who wished to continue his craft without operating his own storefront.

And as loaves flew off the shelves, customers also started asking about the sausages that the baker had previously sold.

So Frühauf expanded his culinary offerings, which now include other kitchen staples (but only ones he personally enjoys), and business is booming again.

“As consumers, readers are very aware,” he told The New York Times, which reported on Frühauf’s business victory.

“It matters to them where things come from, what they are made of.”

Read the full article over your lunch break on the Times’s website.