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A group of veteran bakers watch as Bakery Manager Patrick Joseph cuts sugar cookies from a roll of dough at the Giant Eagle supermarket off Sawmill and Bethel roads.
Using the width of his forefinger as a guide, Joseph quickly slices about two dozen cookies, dips them in sugar and drops them, sugar side up, onto a paper-lined cookie sheet. He flattens each with the palm of his hand.
The training is nothing new to Joseph, who has introduced new workers to Giant Eagle's way of baking before. But this time, his students are more than new acquaintances.
Joseph, who baked for 14 years at Big Bear before he went to work at Giant Eagle three years ago, is a former associate of many of those he's teaching.
About 800 of the 1,000 employees that Giant Eagle Inc. has hired to staff its eight new Ohio supermarkets are former Big Bear employees.
Though Giant Eagle executives say they've never calculated a specific number, today's trainees join a supermarket staff liberally populated with Big Bear veterans.
It's another way Central Ohio's supermarket...