The Bagel or Beigel Story

You’ve seen our bagels, now read our story.

My name is Avi. I’m a Canadian Jewish father and husband with a great love of home cooked food: bagels, in particular! To me, bagels aren’t just round pieces of bread with a hole in the middle. They’re a connection to a thousand-year-old cultural tradition, and a medium for connecting with family, friends, and of course, food.

Although Bagel or Beigel was launched as a business in 2020, my history with this particular round food goes way back - back to when I was 13. I was an entrepreneurial young kid in Toronto shadowing staff in various bakeries, getting a hands-on education about the art of bagel making. However, unlike the bagels produced in huge factories and sold on supermarket shelves across the world, there was nothing mass-produced about these. Each of the bakeries I worked at were family-run, meaning that I not only learned about bagel-making, I also got an education on how to make edible products with the same passion and heart of a homemade meal.

When I came to the UK, I took that knowledge with me and launched my own bakery in the waterfront town of Ipswich. I made bagels, cakes and even carried some North American products that you couldn’t purchase elsewhere in Britain at the time (not like you can now!). This passion and creativity for baked goods kept me going for a long time, and although I moved into another line of work after running my bakery, I always silently craved getting my hands dirty with delicious dough and once again making treats for others to enjoy.

Then lockdown happened. You could say that Bagel or Beigel is a lockdown business - one that launched out of necessity during a difficult period. But it also launched with the rekindling of a love of baking for others.

Me and my eight-year-old daughter, chief bagel tester, and assistant courier, Poppy, began creating bagel recipes at home. These were traditional bagels (not the smooth, uniformly round bagels you see in supermarkets), but we tried various methods of boiling and baking with different ingredients in order to add our own twist to our finished products. Of course, we had to think about bagel fillings too, so we worked with a local supplier to develop our signature salt beef, which is described by some as a ‘union of salty flavour and rich texture’. But we couldn’t just let one filling do all the talking. We paired it with our own pickles and horseradish mustard recipe for a zingy kick!

Our method of pickling was taught to me by my bubbie (or ‘grandma’, for the non-Jewish readers). When I was a child, my bubbie would ask my siblings and I to grab a jar of pickles to prepare for our next meal. The only problem was that the pickles were kept in her cold, dark basement, where none of us ever would enter by choice. We would sprint down the stairs, grab the pickles, and sprint back up, closing the door to the darkness. Our reward would be delicious pickles hand-made with love.

While Poppy and I were still experimenting, I also decided to order some vegan bacon, thinking that it wouldn’t compare to the taste of meat. I was dumbfounded when I realised that I almost couldn’t taste the difference, and thus, our vegan menu was born! Our vegan Canadian maple bacon bagel is a bestseller and we even offer bagels topped with vegan cheese. I am a meat eater, but I want to ensure that everyone can enjoy these bagels - our vegan menu has proved very popular so far, so I’m glad that we made the right decision!

Our menu is constantly growing, and our bagels have sold out each week! So if you’re feeling peckish, get your order in early to avoid missing out! We courier your bagels to your front door (I’m often accompanied by Poppy - don’t worry, this has been quite lucrative for her) so that they arrive safe and sound and, more importantly, fresh and tasty.

We look forward to welcoming you to the world of Bagel or Beigel.

For our Delivery & FAQs page, click here. To contact us, click here.