How It Started

A conversation
overheard
in Berkeley.

2018 · Peet’s Coffee shop

Filmmaker Marty Jackson, an ex-New Yorker who’d just returned from JFK with a suitcase overweight with bagels, overheard Emily Winston interviewing her first employee. She was opening a place called Boichik Bagels, that sold authentic tasting New York Bagels.

He knew immediately he’d found the story and decided to make a Bagel documentary. Three years later, The New York Times would declare Emily’s bagels the best in America. Marty’s lens then followed the bagel from Berkeley to BagelFest in New York, then onward through Instagram threads to bakers in Mexico City, Plymouth, Lima, and back to where it all began: a stone oven in Krakow.

A $5.58 billion global market. 205 million Americans a year. And no one had ever told the whole story, until now.

400 Years of History

The Story

From medieval Kraków to a $5.58 billion global market. Jewish bakers, excluded from Christian baking guilds, turned boiled dough into an enduring icon of survival and resilience. Four centuries later, that same resilience is tested again, this time by an industry racing to scale the bagel and strip away the craft that gave it meaning.

  1. 1610

    First documented reference to bagels in Kraków regulations.

  2. 1683

    Legend links bagels to King Jan Sobieski's victory over the Turks.

  3. 1800s

    Jewish immigrants bring bagels to NYC's Lower East Side and Montréal.

  4. 1937

    Bagel Bakers Union Local 338 forms in New York.

  5. 1950s

    Harry Lender freezes bagels, introducing them to mainstream America.

  6. Today

    A global craft bagel renaissance returns to traditional methods, even as venture capital moves to industrialize it once more.

FEATURED INTERVIEWS

  • Founder, Boichik BagelsEmily Winston
  • Founder, Noah's BagelsNoah Alper
  • Organizer, BagelFestNew York &Los AngelesSam Silverman
  • CEO, Krakow JewishCommunity CenterJonathan Ornstein

filmed around the world

Global Reach

Berkeley✺New York✺Montréal✺Kraków✺Madrid✺Mexico City✺Plymouth UK✺Lima✺Dallas✺Denver✺Los Angeles✺Shenzhen✺Sydney

From North America to South America, Asia to Hawaii, Europe to Australia, following the bagel wherever passion and tradition intersect, in the most unexpected places on earth.