Burglars Smash Copy Quik Copiers; Store Offers $1000

Copy Quik on Mass Ave offered a $1000 reward yesterday for information leading to the arrest of people who broke into the store early Saturday morning, stealing the store's paper cash and doing about $100,000 worth of damage to its copying equipment.

Frank Berardino, Copy Quik's vice-president, said yesterday he thought the burglars--who he said damaged only the most essential equipment in the store--might have been disgruntled ex-employees or agents of a competitor.

Berardino said the burglars concentrated on a three-week old Total Copy System which the store had used to cut its rates from a 3-2 cent scale to a 2-1 cent scale on quantities over 10 copies.

"We're already the best staffed printing company in the country. When we called our suppliers, their response was just fantastic. We'll be back at maybe 85 per cent of capacity tomorrow," Berardino said.

Early March is a particularly important time for copying services, Berardino said, because theses and dissertations must be copied. He said about half of Copy Quik's $800,000 annual business comes from students, and about 30 per cent of it from Harvard people