The secret of Just Bagels is in the water

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The secret of Just Bagels is in the water

15 Dec 2023

Joanie Spencer

Since 2008, Joanie Spencer has covered the retail and wholesale sides of the baking industry.
Serving associations such as the American Society of Baking (ASB) and BEMA, Joanie is also in demand as an industry presenter on bakery operations and trends. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Rockhurst University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

When she’s not running or playing soccer, Joanie spends her time with her husband and 11-year-old son.

BRONX, NY — In 2000, the Just Bagels bakery moved into the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, taking advantage of tax breaks and Con Edison incentives on gas and electric service rates.

Today, Hunts Point is known as one of the most prominent industrial neighborhoods for food production in the US.

“That was the best move we ever made,” said Cliff Nordquist, president of Just Bagels, noting the area’s high property values.

That said, scoring such valuable real estate ultimately landlocked the bakery. But with sharp business acumen and a great relationship with the community, Just Bagels secured the neighboring property for expansion when the owner was ready to sell.

The operation currently has 52,000 square feet to produce roughly 250,000 bagels every day with a diverse customer mix that includes foodservice, hospitality, airlines, colleges, local retail, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) via the bakery’s website and QVC, cable television’s home shopping network.

The brand made its way onto QVC in 2019, a few years after Nordquist helped one of the network’s on-air personalities, Jimmy the Baker, develop a “flagel,” a thin-and-crispy bagel variety, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

“I’m a pretty good salesman, and I obviously really believe in my product,” Nordquist said. “But I couldn’t have imagined how successful we would be on QVC. In 2020, my sales dropped by 70 percent because of the pandemic. How did I survive that? QVC.”

That year, QVC sales went from 5% of Just Bagels’ business to 15%. The partnership has also been serendipitous in terms of product development: It’s a terrific test market for new flavors ranging from caramel apple and chocolate blueberry to Tuscan pizza. One of the most avant-garde flavor innovations for QVC? An asiago hashbrown bagel.

The LTO style that comes with appearing on QVC allows Just Bagels to get creative with its offerings while developing brand recognition for consumers.

In its first year on the network, Just Bagels won the “Best New Food Brand” award, followed by “Customer Favorite Food” in 2020 and 2021. The next year, Just Bagels was again named “Customer Favorite Food” and also earned the “Best Breakfast” award.

This year Just Bagels won those two categories, plus “Most Recommended Brand” and “Favorite Breakfast,” both for the first time, making a clean sweep in its eligible QVC award categories.

One big draw is the ability for people to experience a New York bagel from anywhere in the country — and several other points on the globe.

This isn’t a New York “style” bagel made somewhere else. What makes this product special is, literally, in the water.

“When you make a New York bagel, you have to start with water from the Catskill Mountains, which is the best water in the world for making pizza, pasta and bread,” Nordquist said.

Then again, it’s not just the water.

“There’s a specific process, too,” he said. “And when you put it all together, it’s spectacular.”

That process isn’t an easy one, especially when using ingredients like malt and molasses and relying on long proofing fermentation times, as well as extra steps like boiling before baking. But the Just Bagels team has perfected the art.

In addition to the Catskills water, the bakery uses a proprietary base blend.

“We’re scratch bakers, but people are also human,” Nordquist said. “It’s possible to forget things like adding the right amount of salt, and if that happens, and we don’t find out until the bagels come out, it can create a lot of waste.”

By developing the mix with ingredient developer Bread Partners, Just Bagels can adhere to its scratch formula while simplifying the process for the operators.

“We made it so they can’t make a mistake,” Nordquist said. “The bag has the malt, molasses, all-natural conditioner and the other ingredients, so all they have to do is add the yeast and it’s ready to go.”

Ultimately, it streamlines the process at the front of the line and allows for the time needed to create an artisan-like bagel with consistent quality and a distinct look.

“Our bagels are like snowflakes in that no two look alike,” Nordquist said.

“For big customers that need consistent looking bagels, I’m not sure that we could be that. We’re just not a ‘supermarket bagel.’ We’re a different kind of company, and we have a different kind of customer.”

Creating those “snowflakes” is an intense process that requires plenty of retarding time to ensure proper flavor development.

After the bagel rings are formed on a Bake Tech dough makeup line, racks sit in two proof boxes — up to 100 racks at a time — to rise before heading into the fermentation room where they spend anywhere from 8 to 12 hours at 38°F to allow the yeast, malt and sugar to create that flavor profile.

“It’s almost like a banana ripening,” Nordquist said. “The aging process is what brings it all together, and you can’t rush that.”

While water from the Catskills is vital to the process, how that water is used is just as important. The bagels must be boiled — not steamed or bathed — to develop a texture that’s chewy on the inside while crispy on the outside when toasted. To achieve that, they’re submerged in 1,100 gallons of water held in a Babbco system before they’re baked.

Space constraints keep Nordquist’s eye on neighboring properties; when the opportunity arises, he hopes to expand operations across the street or even a few doors down the block, if possible.

This story has been adapted from the October | Q4 2023 issue of Commercial Baking. Read the full story in the digital edition here.

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