Executives at Bruegger’s Bagels are urging a bankruptcy judge to let them take over its largest franchise, a chain of 28 locations in upstate New York, and to reject a purchase offer from a lender that it says lacks experience in the breakfast food industry, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers, Bruegger’s Bagels officials asked Judge Paul Warren to approve its $1.95 million offer for the franchised chain, whose locations from Albany to Rochester, N.Y., serve about 40,000 bagels a day. Financial professionals who put the chain into bankruptcy on March 2 said it was poorly managed by prior leaders in earlier documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Rochester. They have looked for buyers to take over its Fairport, N.Y.,-based operations. Under its offer, Bruegger’s Bagels officials agreed to spend about $2 million on store renovations and pay some of the chain’s $4.5 million debt to Bridge Funding Group Inc. They also argued that a competing purchase offer involving the chain’s lender, Canal Mezzanine Partners II LP, would put the locations’ financial health at risk.
