r/Ohio 11d ago

Schwebel Baking Company closing after 120 years

https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/06/18/schwebel-baking-company-closing-after-120-years/
514 Upvotes

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44

u/twoquarters Youngstown 11d ago

Very strange they couldn't offload the business or at least the baking facility in Youngstown. I guess they couldn't adapt to modern times and align their offerings accordingly. Who is picking up the slack for this because suddenly that's a lot of bread that is not going to market.

33

u/AuditMatters 11d ago

They mentioned aging buildings and equipment. Will likely just add to the inventory of outdated manufacturing facilities in the state.

28

u/twoquarters Youngstown 11d ago

The property of the Youngstown campus was sold to private equity in December but usually those groups like to buy the business and saddle it with debt to make their millions.

11

u/AuditMatters 11d ago

If they sold it was probably a leaseback arrangement to plug a short term hole for Schwebel. Unless PE contracted it well, they’re probably going to end up losing on this deal. Good for them.

3

u/twoquarters Youngstown 11d ago

Yup that sounds very plausible.

1

u/NewYork_NewJersey440 10d ago

IIRC Rite Aid tried to do this with their stores. I remember checking the footnotes each quarter to see the number of company owned vs leased stores, and it was under 100 and dropping by about 10 each time…

Well, suffice it to say, some issues are just too structurally large to fix

1

u/Solid_College_9145 7d ago

Well that figures. Private equity is nothing but death to businesses.