Queen of the Bagel Business | Hacker News Reader

Queen of the Bagel Business

thehustle.co

43 pointsqi10410413 comments

> When I tell her she makes it sound easy, she responds smoothly. “It is,” she says, reminding me her own shop sells 1k bagels on the weekends.

> To start a bagel shop today, she says, costs ~$500k.

"To START" - key quote. Rent, machinery, staff, etc. And then you have to do volume (~1k/day) to even start to cover costs. Then you need ancillary products like coffee (huge margins), cream cheese, etc.

I've been making bagels for almost 4 years and looked into the economics, it's hard and you wont break even for at least a couple years. As someone in tech, trying to get to my current salary would take around 5 years, that doesn't include the time investment, especially with a family.

It sounds like it could be more lucrative to be a restaurant/baking consultant/trainer than to run a restaurant directly. Devilish details in the execution, requiring just the right individuals and timing and probably luck. With lots of ways to fail.

The problem with being a consultant in that industry is that your prospective clients usually don’t understand that they have a problem until it’s too late. Additionally, the restauranteurs who need help are usually under-capitalized. A friend of mine used to do this sort of (consulting) work, and it was relatively low-earning for him (he was an accountant).

The other commenter makes directly salient points but one thing that can happen is that they expand their speaking engagement market by getting hired for events reaching broader audiences using the lessons they learned in their niche. That's how a relative nobody ends up making five figures per speaking engagement (pulling in six- and seven-figures per is going to be for known celebrities/public figures.) Then there's book and other media deals...

It really messed with my worldview when I learned how some people became rich talking about a thing they only might be actually knowledgeable about, only because they were good enough at talking about it. Or simply because they got lucky with some otherwise random factor (often merely timing of some sort.)

What I REALLY hated discovering were the motivational speaker types making money selling (at the time) tapes and such talking about how to be successful at fucking MLM. These are people who made a bunch of money because they were at or near the top of the pyramid. Just pure, unfettered conning.

On one hand, it's kinda like selling shovels in a gold rush.

On the other, a consultant needs to grow/maintain their brand. That's a skill like running business is a skill.

I am sure she makes nice pastries, but those are not bagels.

Bagels are cooked in firewood ovens. And they are certainly not "fluffy"!

Best bagels are in Montreal.

Around here we have a nice bagel shop also. Look for "Bagel Maguire Cafe" in your search engine of choice ... you can also find pictures of their big firewood oven.

There are bakeries throughout Canada, and probably a few outside Canada, that make Montreal-style bagels.

I've never heard of anyone outside Toronto advertising "Toronto-style bagels"

The parent comment may be worded obnoxiously but it has a grain of truth.

The article is about someone in New York State making New York-style bagels, so what does Toronto have to do with it?

The only "grain of truth" in the parent comment is how it shows that there are plenty of people who can't figure out how to talk about what they like without denigrating stuff they don't, for no good reason. Maybe Montreal bagels and New York bagels are simply different, and that's okay? Not everything has to be a competition.

What a strange thing to gatekeep on, and to be so confidently incorrect about.

And I swear to god did I just google my way to an airport cafe

I am aware of the difference between NewYork bagels and Montreal bagels... You might want to read this:

https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/montreal-bagel...

and this, from an AI:

"... The dough is boiled in honey water, hand-rolled and baked in a wood-fired oven; it contains malt but no salt or eggs, giving a crisper, sweeter, flatter and denser bagel than New York's. The texture difference traces back to which region of Poland each city's immigrants came from. "

If you’re aware that they are different, why are you calling anything other than a Montreal-style bagel “not bagels”?

Pastries, even!

Why would you ever list steps of a recipe out of order? I haven't been to Canada but none of the recipes I've read this this was posted have you forming the bagels after boiling "the dough". Weird.

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