Video shows man taking bread from iconic South Philly bakery

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - Video shows a brazen bicyclist taking bread from an iconic South Philly bakery before the store even opened its doors.

Termini Brothers, on South 8th street, is world-famous for their cookies and pastries. But basic bread? That gets delivered to the bakery before dawn each morning.

Well, imagine Joe's surprise when his brother, Vince, Jr. called him up Tuesday morning with a rather bizarre alert:

"'He said, can you believe they stole daddy's bread?'"

There it was captured on the bakery's security cameras just before Termini's first baker reported to work at 5 a.m., a man on a bike rode up. He appeared to have loaves of french bread already under his arm.

But he was not finished with his morning rounds. The freshly delivered Terminis bread was sitting-- bagged up-- at the front door.

"He looked at it as a bag of money," said Vince Jr. "He looked in the window and was like, 'this is mine.' He was barely able to drive away on his bike-- he almost lost his balance."

Sure enough, the man grabbed the whole bag, then headed to his bike, balanced out his load of goodies and pedaled away, down 8th street, according to the video.

"What if we were in here" asks Vince Jr. "I mean, it's so brazen, that someone would do something like that, for a loaf of bread!"

The brothers posted security camera images to the bakery's Facebook page and loyal customers expressed outrage on their behalf. The brothers are not so much angry-- hey, it was 20 loaves of bread, not a multi-million dollar jewel heist. But they see a bigger, "quality of life" issue in the neighborhood they call home.

"This is South Philly," said Joe to FOX 29's Bruce Gordon. "It's tight. You know, we're a tight-knit community and we do anything we can for each other. We help each other."

And when this kind me of petty crime strikes?

"It's deflating."

Is it possible the thief was stealing the bread simply to feed his family? At 20 loaves from this job plus the bread already under his arm, it seems unlikely. For that much bread, said Vince Jr.,"He'd better have a big pot of gravy!"

Sent from my iPhone