Update 7/31/11: We succeeded! We can’t thank everyone enough!
Update 7/12/11: Another campaign video!
Update 6/20/11: Check out our newest campaign video!

Detroit: A Bagel Desert

Friends, the bagel is an extinct species in Detroit.  There is not one bagel bakery in the city.  We, the Newman brothers, hope to change this by expanding our bagel business from our home kitchen into a real brick-and-mortar location.

We have been perfecting our bagel recipe since December 2010, and started the Detroit Institute of Bagels in February 2011. These bagels are real: boiled and baked.

And they are good: customers have told us it’s the best bagel they’ve had in decades since living in Toronto or New York, and that now they can’t eat any other bagel.

Not all the bagels are your ordinary variety of sesame, poppy seed, and salt.  The Detroit Institute of Bagels studies and pushes the frontier of bagel tastes.  Our small-batch bagels include a bacon cheddar bagel, with bacon kneaded into the dough, a cherry chocolate chunk bagel, with dried cherries from Traverse City, a blueberry ricotta bagel, and a rosemary-olive oil-sea salt bagel.  Not enough? How about a fragelrock: a raisin bagel-hole deep-fried and then tossed in cinnamon and sugar.  These aren’t your normal Lender’s Bagels.

The Impact of Saving the Bagels

The DIB will increase the livability of the city, attract more residents, bring in dollars from neighboring suburbs, employ city residents and put Detroit on the map in the bagel world.

This bagel shop could more than double the population of Detroit (see graph), through offering a staple and sign of any growing community – the bagel.  And the small-batch varieties available at the DIB will increase visitors coming to the city, which in turn increases foot traffic, which decreases crime, which makes Detroit that much better of a place to live!

Bagel culture has stagnated with major brands controlling the market, resulting in new “innovations” such as the flat bagel, which seem to be the bagels on the bottom of the crate that got flattened when they were shipped across the country. The DIB, being a nimble independent organization, can continue to push the bagel possibility frontier, creating new bagel varieties like the coney bagel (bagel with chili, onions, and mustard), or a pumpkin bagel with sunflower seeds and sea salt, or a s’more bagel! Take that, corporate bagels!

Without the DIB expanding, Detroit will continue to lack bagels.  Omni Consumer Products might take over the police force.  But really, residents will not have a place to congregate to eat and solve community issues, visitors won’t have another incentive to come check out the city, tax revenue for the City will remain low, there will be fewer residents and fewer jobs.  And don’t forget the future of bagels is at stake – unless you want to continue to eat flat bagels.

What We Need & What You Get

To expand, the DIB needs equipment.  Specifically, a kettle (to boil), an oven (to bake), and a cooler (to chill).  The tally for this equipment is around $24,750.  We’re hoping to raise $10,000 to cover the cost of just the oven.  Just think, every time you order bagels or see someone eating a DIB bagel, you can say “They made that in my oven!”.

What do you get in return for helping us buy this oven? Can you guess? That’s right, bagels!  Or, would you rather have an invite to our grand opening party? Why not an exclusive bagel class when the store opens!  Or become immortalized by creating a bagel and naming it for our menu! Still not enough?  Get your favorite piece of art reproduced with subtle bagels!  You want more?

How about: A LIFETIME of BAGELS!

Just hit this comically-large button to save the bagels! (not anymore! we hit our goal!)

Other Ways You Can Help

Share this page! Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter! We’re always open to other funding sources, bagel ideas, bagel business talk, or Detroit business talk, so drop us an email!