Boichik Bagels hosted its soft opening event on Thursday morning after months of anticipation from locals within the Peninsula. The Palo Alto storefront is owner Emily Winston’s second Bay Area shop behind Berkeley. Given the shop’s established popularity, Winston had braced herself for a busy morning.
“We were expecting a crowd and we got one,” she told SFGATE via email. “Peninsula folks have been clamoring for a while … [and] there’s a whole lot of hungry ex-pat Recent Yorkers here, especially around Stanford. We made 1,800 bagels today and about [two-thirds were] passed by 11 a.m.”
In January, Winston announced plans to unveil a Boichik store in Palo Alto months after first sharing that she would open a wholesale plant in Berkeley to assist with bagel production. Ahead of the soft opening on Thursday, Winston raised funds through discounted gift cards she dubbed “Bagel Bucks” used to assist complete the Berkeley plant.
She moreover raised greater than $1 million as of Thursday through SMBX, a crowdsourcing platform for small businesses. Winston shared that the funds collected would go toward equipment on the Berkeley facility and Palo Alto store.
After the Recent York Times published its controversial tackle California having a stronger bagel game than Recent York, bagel sales at Boichik swelled overnight. Winston previously told SFGATE that she needed to finish nationwide shipping following the article when her Berkeley flagship couldn’t sustain with demand.
Staff prepare bagels at Boichik Bagels in Berkeley. The favored bagel shop opened its Palo Alto storefront on Thursday.
Lydia Daniller“Emily Winston’s bagels are a number of the finest Recent York-style bagels I’ve ever tasted. They simply occur to be made in Berkeley,” Recent York Times author Tejal Rao said of Boichik Bagels last 12 months.
Boichik Bagels first opened in 2019 when Winston, a Recent York expat, decided to dive headfirst into the burgeoning Bay Area bagel scene. On the time, she said she desired to create a product that was harking back to H&H Bagels, a storied East Coast business known for making bagels with thick, crunchy crusts.
Boichik Bagels, 855 El Camino Real, Palo Alto. Open day by day, 7 a.m.-3 p.m.
