One day while the depression was in its depths, my friends Dr. Angel and William Petros, while having lunch, called me over to join them. They brought to my attention the fact that one of the two Greek owned wholesale bakeries, namely the Golden West Bakery on Seventeenth Street, was in the hands of the Board of Trade and that the place would be sold in bankruptcy court to the highest bidder. The business had been owned and run by the Sarantidis brothers for many years and now they were about to lose it. I don't remember how they talked me into it but they convinced me to go to court the next morning and bid for the bakery.

As the auction started, the Langendorf Baking Company, one of the largest in San Francisco, bid a very low price. I kept increasing the bid in $500 and $1,000 amounts until the price had doubled. The Langendorf people then asked for a fifteen minute recess so that they could get authority to bid higher. While in recess, I realized that I had gone to the limits myself and that I had better not stretch my luck. In the event Langendorf gave up and I ended up with bakery, I would have a difficult time raising the money to buy it and to operate the business.

When the court resumed the bidding, Langendorf's next bid was $1,000 higher, and I gave up. They bought the good will, the equipment, the trucks and everything that was part of the business. This included all their accounts, sales people, drivers and so forth. The building, however, belonged to the family and was not part of the corporation that was sold. So the Sarantidis family kept the building and land when the Langendorf people moved everything out, lock stock and barrel.

Immediately afterward, I was approached again by the same people and I was asked to try to find enough people to start the bakery all over again under a different corporation and a different name. Tony Sarantidis, one of the brothers, and Peter Brown who was working as a salesman for the Continental Baking Company, together with a few other friends, convinced me that it was a good opportunity to build a successful business. They argued that we could equip the building without too much money; that they knew the business; that they were willing to work hard for minimum wages; that we could rebuild the business with the goodwill we had; and, that we could employ a number of Greeks who had worked in the bakery and who knew the business.

Unfortunately, I believed them. I invested some of my money. They invested some of theirs; and we started the Sterling Baking Company. We equipped the bakery. When it came time for us to start baking and delivering I suggested to them that we start with four trucks with four routes to cover as much area as we possibly could in the city. My idea was for Tony Sarantidis to drive one and Peter Brown to drive another until we had built up enough business to hire union help. The other two trucks would be hired help. The idea was to keep expenses down until we had developed enough business for them to become in-house managers.

To my disgust and to my misfortune, they both refused to do it. They both wanted to be instant managers and neither wanted to drive a truck. Instead of starting with four trucks we started with eight. We started losing money from the first week in operation.

We also had the misfortune that, at that time, many agencies were formed by the federal government to stimulate business. One of them, I believe it was the AAA, put an additional tax of $2.50 on each barrel of flour. This cost us between $25.00 and $50.00 a day in additional expenses. The larger, established bakeries had the resources to carry this additional expense without raising their prices. They could sustain the losses for the period of time that the tax was in effect. What the tax did was to eliminate the smaller competition and give the big companies the field to themselves.

We kept battling but it was a lost cause from the beginning. I then called my two friends together and I thanked them for losing a few thousand dollars. I announced that I was severing my connection with the bakery. I had no further liability or responsibility for the operation. This was the first opportunity for me to invest in a line of business in which I had no experience but great hopes. After that I concentrated on the restaurant business and worked harder than ever in order to make up what I had lost.

(The business soon failed and the Sarantitis family lost their interest in the land and building!)