Louis Fishgold Inc. ceases operations as woes mount

Louis Fishgold Inc. has ceased operations, idling its fleet of distinctively decorated trucks and locking the doors at its Jefferson Road headquarters.
Until this month, the 26-year-old firm was one of the area’s largest produce distributors.
A supplier to Wegmans Food Markets Inc., Tops Markets Inc. and other supermarket chains, Louis Fishgold Inc. at its peak boasted sales of $25 million and a payroll of 120. It also ranked as one of the area’s fastest-growing private firms, placing 99th in 1991 and 33rd in 1992 on the Rochester Top 100 list.
Now, the produce company is in apparent collapse, leaving an undetermined number of creditors to look for answers from its namesake founder and president.
But since the firm’s abrupt shutdown two weeks ago, Louis Fishgold himself has proved elusive, creditors say.
Meanwhile, David Fishgold, brother to Louis and a longtime salesman at Louis Fishgold Inc., has opened a wholesale produce business under his name.
David Fishgold’s enterprise, like Louis Fishgold Inc., operates from the Genesee Valley Regional Market.
The regional market is a state authority set up to provide land on which food-related businesses can locate facilities. Firms operating at the market lease land from the authority, but build and maintain their own facilities.
Although David Fishgold might have picked up some of his brother’s old accounts, the two businesses are unconnected, said William Mulligan, market administrator.
Wegmans spokeswoman Jo Natale confirmed that the Rochester-based supermarket chain is buying from David Fishgold. The new firm is a major local supplier to Wegmans, she said, while adding that locally bought produce makes up only a fraction of what Wegmans purchases.
Natale said Wegmans also believes the two Fishgold enterprises to be unrelated.
Some creditors are skeptical.
“That’s what they allege,” said attorney Francis Mahan of Hirsch & Tubiolo.
He represents C.H. Robinson Inc., a Minnesota firm that is attempting to slap a lien on Louis Fishgold Inc. in federal court here. The Rochester company owes his client more than $70,000, Mahan said.
Likewise suspicious of the David Fishgold start-up is John DeLyser, a Marion potato farmer. He obtained liens totaling some $12,000 against Louis Fishgold Inc. in state Supreme Court here on April 7 and April 11.
On April 14, Bloomfield truck farmers Howard and Sandra Schlenker also slapped a lien on the firm in state court. According to documents on file at the Monroe County Clerk’s Office, Louis Fishgold Inc. owes the Schlenkers $32,526 for cabbage and squash they sold to the company.
DeLyser said his bills stretch back to December. He said Louis Fishgold assured him that his business setbacks were temporary problems stemming from divorce proceedings involving himself and his wife and business partner, Margaret Fishgold.
Neither Fishgold brother returned phone calls to the Rochester Business Journal.
A call to Louis Fishgold Inc. this week yielded only a terse, recorded message stating that the firm is taking no orders at this time.
Mulligan said that he has been aware of financial strain at Louis Fishgold Inc. for some time.
He also said that Fishgold, a friend since childhood, cited his ongoing divorce proceedings as a source of business woes.
Despite their longstanding personal acquaintance, Mulligan said, Fishgold gave him only a sketchy view of the firm’s problems.
Fishgold has spoken of putting the firm’s 20,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility on the market, he said, but otherwise shared little of his plans.
As of midweek, Louis Fishgold Inc. had not started bankruptcy proceedings.
Documents on file at the county clerk’s office reveal heavy borrowing by the firm over the past two years.
In September 1993, it borrowed $1 million from M&T Bank, granting liens against the business and fixtures as collateral.
In the same month, Fishgold himself borrowed $65,000 from 950 Jefferson Road Associates, a real estate venture in which he is a partner.
Other partners include Monro Muffler Brake Inc. founder Charles August and his brother Burton, a Monro Muffler director, Mulligan said.
During 1994, Louis Fishgold Inc. borrowed five more times from lending firms in Western New York and the Midwest, again putting up as collateral various assets such as trucks, other equipment and receivables.
Amounts borrowed from these firms were not stated in public records.
Meanwhile, since Louis Fishgold Inc.’s shutdown, a stream of local and out-of-town creditors have contacted Mulligan seeking Fishgold’s whereabouts.
“I don’t know what to tell them,” Mulligan said. “Louie always was an enigma.”