ENGLEWOOD, NJ — When it comes to the art of bagel-making, Beth George is holding court.
A lawyer and full-time international bagel consultant, George is the co-founder and CEO of BYOB Bagels — the acronym standing for “build your own business” and “be your own boss” — and helps clients around the world cultivate their entrepreneurial bagel dreams.
Her roots in the baking industry began at home when she discovered her son was gluten sensitive and had to shift his diet away from certain wheat-based products. Replacing or substituting some of his favorite foods were easier than others, but the bagel was a craving that couldn’t be conquered with what was available on the market. So, she got to work with one key ingredient: spelt.
“I asked him, ‘what are you missing most?’, and of course his answer was bagels,” George said. “Spelt is like a close cousin to wheat; it’s gluten-based but easier to digest. It’s an expensive grain, but it was working.”
She created Spelt Right Foods, a manufacturer of baked goods using the ancient grain spelt sold in grocery chains across the country for about eight years. It was there she learned to use her analytical forces for good in the world of clean bagel formulation. That skill that turned the head of her mentor and co-founder of BYOB Bagels, baking industry veteran Frank Mauro.
“[Frank] had been in the baking industry forever, and he told me that I have the analytical mindset and understand the science of the baking,” George said. “Most people don’t have both.”
Nowadays you can find George working with bagel makers big and small across five continents. One of her company’s former clients is the iconic bagel-ball brand Bantam Bagels, a Shark Tank-endorsed bagel brand that sold for $34 million in 2018.
From the horn of Africa to Sweden to Paris and back, she’s helping bagel businesses master their own formulas using their unique locally sourced flour and adding in her proprietary blend of ingredients. She developed the formula with her son, now a chemist and engineer, carrying on the foodie-mathematician family tradition.
“Many people don’t realize that baking is so math-based and that all flour is not created equal,” George said. “Especially since importing flour is so complicated with cost and supply chain issues, we ask our international clients to send us their local flour and then we make it work by blending in our other ingredients.”
George also guides her clients through budgeting, projections, making the right equipment purchases and meeting ingredient suppliers. At the core of the operation is accessibility, sustainability and, most importantly, relationships.
“With every client, I introduce them to manufacturers and suppliers so they can know who they are, what they’re about and what their product has to offer,” George said. “I want them to be attached to what they’re doing and teach them the reason why their products taste so good.”
“With every client, I introduce them to manufacturers and suppliers so they can know who they are, what they’re about and what their product has to offer,” George said. “I want them to be attached to what they’re doing and teach them the reason why their products taste so good.”
When it comes to equipment, she prioritizes purchases that propel her and her clients toward maximum sustainability. She has high praise for the Excalibur rotating rack oven, which has a cascading water system that allows bagels to “boil in place.” It creates only 21 to 25 lbs. of wastewater per week at the rate of baking 1,000 bagels a day. After years of working with her proprietary formula and this sustainable oven system, she has mastered a crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside bagel with feel-good ingredients.
Moving forward, George has big plans for BYOB Bagels. She’s currently working with the New York, NY-based non-profit Concern for Independent Living to open a retail bagel shop in the newly renovated Surf Vets Place in Coney Island. The iconic building has more than 120 affordable-housing apartments, with 60% of those being dedicated for formerly homeless veterans. When the bagel shop is in business, the goal is to offer training and jobs to people who live there, providing the community with great-tasting bagels and lifelong skills.
“We’re taking it in phases, and it’s really great,” George said. “It makes me supremely happy to be working on something with a dual mission. With the Surf Vets project, we are expanding our reach by doing a community-based project while offering delicious, clean-label take-out in a neighborhood that lacks many healthful options.”
She also has her sights set on working with larger bakery entities to bring clean-label baked goods to supermarkets and beyond. Her product is built with scalability without compromising on quality, even if it means a slightly shorter shelf life.
“If we want food that’s real and that’s going to make us feel good, it’s going to break down eventually,” George said. “I do think there’s room for larger companies to see what we are doing on a smaller scale and know that it can be scaled up.”
Although one client refers to her as the “crazy bagel lady,” the only thing she’s crazy for is teaching people to love what they do and how to pass that love to others. At the end of the day, she said, it’s caring about the product that matters most.
“If people feel connected to what they’re making or doing, they will be more likely to be an employee who’s dedicated to the job,” George said. “I want the people working for the people I work for to know why it’s good, because care for the product matters.”
