The experiment was a success. Mr. Frühauf began keeping baker’s hours, and Mr. Schill’s former customers started coming to the bookstore to buy their daily bread. Some, like Norbert Bergmann, a retired Catholic priest, got into the habit of picking up a book or TV guide, too.

Some of Mr. Frühauf’s regular customers found the idea strange at first, but they came around quickly. “It’s fun to eat breakfast again,” said Regina Kistner, who raised her family here, and had been making do with the processed rolls sold at the supermarket. “These taste good,” she added, leaving the store with two rolls (one rye and one sesame), a tabloid paper (for her neighbor) and the British romance novel “A Summer at Sea.”

Mr. Schill, the baker, said he for one was very happy to have found such an open-minded partner in the bookseller. “There’s a saying, I remember learning as a child, from the old people. ‘Go with the times, or with time, you’ll go.’”

Before long, customers asked Mr. Frühauf if he could start selling the sausages Mr. Schill used to sell — like the bakeries, the town’s once plentiful supply of butchers had dwindled, as shops went out of business or owners grew old and died. Customers, particularly older ones, were not always able to drive out of town to get their cumin or garlic fix. So Mr. Frühauf cleared some more space and bought a small refrigerator.