After graduating from business school in Boston, Laura Trust and Alan Litchman found jobs in Corporate America and ended up on a job assignment in Hong Kong. Wanting to do something on their own, they considered starting an American restaurant concept in Hong Kong. While doing due diligence, they found , at that time a 5-unit chain. Laura and Alan bought the company, got married, and returned home to Boston to try to grow the company there.

Twelve years later, with stores throughout the Boston and Metro Boston area, Alan and Laura received hundreds of letters from Bostonians who had moved away, and visitors who had come to while in Boston, requesting them to open stores in every part of the country. Unable to meet such demand with their own stores, Laura and Alan saw an opportunity to provide high quality hand-made bagels to everyone who wanted them by selling their bagels throughout America in the frozen sections of Grocery Stores. They took the same hand-boiled and baked bagels from their retail stores, and flash froze them. When thawed, the bagel was as good as when it came out of the oven. They knew then that they could provide the World’s Best Bagels to many more people than just those who could get to their retail stores.

introduced their branded frozen bagel in September of 2009 and they are now sold in over 750 grocery stores throughout the Northeast. Laura and Alan continue to grow the branded bagel business with the goal of providing real, hand-made bagels to every man, woman and child in America.

About the same time as the branded bagels where introduced to the grocery stores, the school systems, nursing homes and other food service providers throughout the New England area requested a smaller, but just as high quality bagel for their customers. The foodservice business had traditionally been one of low quality, cost driven, bulk purchasing, so Laura and Alan naturally assumed they could never compete in that commodity driven business. There would always be a cheaper “bagel” since using high quality ingredients and hand-baking costs more. As it turns out, quality is gaining favor with many foodservice channels. Parents want their children eating well in school, and patients, visitors and healthcare workers don’t want chemical-filled, round bread. They want real bagels.

So was born! use the same ingredients as bagels to produce 3 oz and smaller bagels to meet the FDA requirements and foodservice channel needs. The demand for the product has far outpaced expectations, and the bagel-making facility in Newton now sends truckloads of bagels to school systems, nursing homes, prison systems, and even to grocery store chains (under the store’s own private label) throughout the country.

still serves thousands of guests in their retail bakery cafes throughout Boston each year. For more information on retail locations, please visit www.finagleonline.com.