Does a bad day at the office or a tiff with your spouse send you marching to the cookie jar or the corner bakery?

Baking is a big and very conservative business in Germany, a $14 billion industry dominated by family-run corner bakeries.

The concept is one that Magnolia has honed to a T, that of the quintessential corner bakery, a perfect little shop you might happen upon in any small town, selling perfectly frosted cupcakes.

In fact, this building, whose address is One Rockefeller Park, is so "green" that even its corner bakery is organic.

The rest will be held by the Diniz family, which has controlled Companhia Brasileira since it was founded as a corner bakery in 1948.

The family business began when Alois Fink opened a corner bakery on the Upper East Side.

But as a practical matter, the new era will be rung in at automated bank tellers, supermarket check-out lines, gasoline stations and corner bakeries.

He walked into a corner bakery and pointed to three pastries that he wanted inside the display case.

Gloria Flores, owner of the corner bakery, said Mr. Dobosu pushed a little boy in a wheelchair to watch the Afro-American parade.

In the cyberspace revolution, he contends, the social impact will be greater, transferring much broader segments of human existence into a commercial arena far more pervasive than the corner bakery.