commissary INSIDER - October 2016 - 2

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"For us, quality is the backbone of everything we try to do. You're
only as good as your next bagel."
Nick Olesak, Bantam Bagels
just to bake it out of our tiny retail shop
and hustle it around the clock," Elyse
says.
They bought extra freezers and drove
batches of the product to warehouse
space in Long Island where they waited
for shipping. At the same time, the couple was networking, laying the groundwork for expansion and looking for comanufacturing partners.
"Once you get those things done, you
figure out the infrastructure for getting
it done better the next time," Elyse says.
"The first step is to get it done with what
you have and figure out how to do it, and
while you're doing it, you can visualize
what would be a more efficient way to
do this."
That mindset has helped the business
thrive over the last year of blinding
growth.
In the summer of 2015, Bantam struck
its initial deal with Starbucks - a partnership that began with an email to the
company's regional director and resulted in the bagel bites being sold at three

NYC locations. The couple began delivering their product to those three locations themselves. A few months later,
Starbucks wanted to expand Bantam to
32 stores.
"At that point, Elyse, myself and our head
of operations were delivering at 4 a.m. on
Saturdays," Nick says. "We did that for a
couple months."
The next expansion - this time to 400
Starbucks locations - meant finding a
logistics partner was no longer a want,
but a need. Bantam not only found help
with transportation, the company also
moved into a co-manufacturing space in
Brooklyn, where it still calls home and
now uses about 20,000-sq-ft and more
than 40 employees to produce nearly a
million bagels bites per week.
"We formed a partnership with another
co-manufacturer and since it's in Brooklyn we still get that New York City water,
which is so important for bagels," Elyse
says. "We have been, piece by piece, upgrading the way we produce by investing
in equipment, all while staying true to the
original bagel and making sure the flavor

and the consistency and everything is
as good as that first one we made in our
apartment. That's not an easy feat."
How does the company maintain that
taste and quality now that it is producing for a nation-wide consumer base? It
all goes back to the recipe, Nick says. It
hasn't changed since the couple finally
perfected the product in their apartment
kitchen.
Now that recipe is assembled in the
Brooklyn production space. The entire
process - from mixing, forming, depositing and baking - is completed in the
facility before the bagels are flash-frozen
and shipped to retailers. The quality ingredients and production process, Nick
says, maintains the freshness through
freezing and transportation.
"That's the same recipe we still use in
our large facility today," he says. "For
us, quality is the backbone of everything
we try to do. You're only as good as your
next bagel. We're trying to not only gain
a lot of new customers, but also retain
the amazing customers we've been able
to get over the last three years."

An unexpected advantage
Neither of the Olesaks have a background in the culinary nor baking worlds.
They both worked on Wall Street after

THE SECRET TO A BAGEL BITE? IT HAS TO FIRST BE A GOOD BAGEL, SAYS NICK OLESAK. PHOTO CREDIT: BANTAM
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