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So, apparently, is the proprietor. An ex-Army cook who started with $1,800 in 1946, he now gleefully watches some competitors approaching bankruptcy —while his business enjoys a six-figure gross, much of it in mail orders. Other kitchenware sellers may receive orders from out of town; only Bridge regularly gets them from Paris, where gourmets request recherche items like his tiny pea-size melon scoops. Yet despite the curmudgeonly manner, Bridge has permitted success to go only to his wallet, not his head. He refuses to open a branch store, for example, because quality controls could not be maintained. Such elevated standards recently led TV Chef Julia Child to pronounce the Bridge company "reasonable, personal and full of things you just can't get anywhere else." Many of those things are devices that Bridge designs. Solingen steelmakers in Germany produce his oversize all-purpose kitchen knife. Marble quarries in Carrara, Italy, supply him with the special slabs that he specifies for kneading dough. A French factory manufactures his unique upright asparagus cooker. These bestsellers are delivered—and sold—a thousand at a time. That largesse may give patrons great entrees, but it also gives Fred Bridge new impatience with sluggish buyers—and fresh skepticism about the current headlines.
"I don't get it," he says, frowning at hesitant consumers. "I keep reading about trouble. All I know is, I never made so much money in my life. Is there really a recession out there?"