Full Transcript – Jeff Perera – Wild Business Growth Podcast #337

This is the full transcript for Episode #337 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Jeff Perera – Jeff’s Bagel Run, Crazy Bagel Flavors. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Jeff Perera 0:00
Ah, okay, this is Wild.

Max Branstetter 0:17
Wild Welcome back to Wild Business Growth. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into, you guessed it, Wild growth. I am Max Branstetter, your host. You can email me at and this is episode 337, let’s see that suspense I built up for you there. Today’s guest is Jeff Perera. Jeff is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Jeff’s Bagel Run. He will never guess where the name Jeff came from. In this episode, we talk how they create the most creative bagels that you’ll see how Jeff went from being laid off to starting a business that is expanding and expanding and expanding across different states and some of the most mouthwatering bagel flavors and bagel stories you will ever hear. It is Jeff, and this is bagel making music. Enjoy the show. Alrighty, we are here with the Jeff from Jeff’s bagel run. Jeff Pereira, co founder and vice president of Jeff’s bagel run, which is continuing its run across not only Florida now, but additional states as well, really cool, innovative bagel company with tons of great flavors and and some of the most delicious sounding cream cheese I’ve ever heard about. Jeff, thank you so much for joining. How you doing

Jeff Perera 1:49
today? Oh man, I’m doing great. Thanks for having me today. Super excited, of course, of course.

Max Branstetter 1:54
Same here. So we’re going to get to all things bagels. But before that, I know that your story, at least for this company, starts a little bit after you got laid off. But before we get to the actual, like, Bagel idea, what can you share about like, kind of how you handled it internally, the transition from like, being, like, working full time to, oh, my God, I’m I’m jobless right now, it

Jeff Perera 2:20
was shocking. You know, I had worked over 25 years of my life. And you know, I was working when I was in middle school, you know, I had always had a job. I always was doing something. Was always busy. And you know, to have a meeting with my boss to be told that I was being laid off was pretty, pretty tough, you know, I didn’t know what I was gonna do. Danielle, who’s my wife and business partner at Jess bagel run. She was a stay at home mom at the time, you know, at home taking care of our daughter and our son, and it’s like, hey, coming home, and she’s like, what happened? I was like, I lost my job. That was kind of scary. You know, you didn’t know what to do. But you find a way it’s a very interesting moment to be in, because you never think it’s going to happen to you, and then it does, and when it does, you’re just like, Okay, well, I’ll just take the next step. And so in that moment, I started looking for a job. She had been talking about going back to work, and started communicating with her former company, and she landed the job first, and she’s, you know what, why don’t you take a break? You become the stay at home parent. I’ll go back to work. We switched roles. And I’d like to say I never went back to work. I was, like, retired since I since I lost my job.

Max Branstetter 3:33
That’s the way to do it. How did, uh, your wife and family react when you kind of came home a little bit early that day?

Jeff Perera 3:40
They were shocked. It was kind of like disbelief, like, Oh, really that? How did that happen? And this was August of 2019 so it was pre pandemic, where there were significant layoffs, and people were obviously, a lot of people were delivered at the time, but like pre pandemic, and I had always been like a great performer in all the jobs I’d ever had. I’d never been a part of a restructuring or any type of layoff before, and so it was just a shock. I think everybody was just like, kind of like, Huh? Well, what do we do? You know? And there was, like, a little bit of a severance package. And so we had some time to figure out what the next thing was going to be. But it’s, it is kind of scary when you don’t know when that next

Max Branstetter 4:18
paycheck is coming. On that note, what advice can you share for anybody who’s been laid off like that?

Jeff Perera 4:27
This is a great question, because I’ve had people ask me this, and it’s changed over the years. So in the beginning it was, you know, stay positive. You’ll find something. As the pandemic stretched out through the end of 2020, 2021, and the economy was what it was, what it was, and people were having trouble finding the work that they were maybe previously doing, the conversation kind of changed, and it became more of a like, well, what are you passionate about? What do you like to do? You know, the the internet is an incredible tool for people of all ages, and you can find something that you know you’re passionate about, that you like doing. Then you could probably find a way to monetize that. And so it became more of like a what do you like to do, and how can that become something that pays you? And also now, as I move into, like, my fifth year as a bagel maker, Bagel maker, oh, no, whatever, whatever I do, whatever, however, you bagel Master, I tell people eyes like, you have to measure your success against yourself, not against other people. And so I’ve changed a lot of like, how that answer is, like, stay positive to, you know, what are you passionate about? What brings you joy to like, success doesn’t have a yardstick. It’s really just like the expectations you set for yourself and comparing what you do to someone else is just gonna steal that away from you.

Max Branstetter 5:47
Oh, yeah, we can totally get behind that. I think I just feel like the whole Keeping Up with the Joneses thing is so dangerous and clearly not good for mental health, and it just kind of makes you it can make you upset if you think about you know, only thing about other people that way and way too often we forget if like, like, look how far I’ve come in two years. Look how far I’ve come in five years. It’s like I was a totally different person. Like, it’s when you think about it that way is a wonderful and delicious way to segue it to go about it 100% let’s talk Jeff’s bagel run. When did this bagel idea first serve itself on your plate?

Jeff Perera 6:29
So bagels have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. You know, I was born in the Northeast. Grew up in South Florida for you know, always having access to good bagels. My wife, Danielle, was a long Islander, spent time in the Northeast as well. We together would seek out bagels when we were in new cities, or if we were trying to find a great breakfast spot, it just became a part of our our weekly routine, and we’d go on these bagel runs. And when I got laid off, she was worried about me. She was concerned for my mental health, for my ability to, like, stay busy. And she said, you know, why don’t you make me a bagel? And I was like, I mean, I had zero culinary experience. I’d never baked anything that didn’t come out of a box, taken break. Cookies were about as good as it got for me. And I was like, Sure, let’s, let’s learn how to make a bagel. I dug into it. I was really interested in learning something new, getting my hands dirty. You know that tactile experience of forming and making dough is therapeutic. That was, I guess, when the bagel run was born. It wasn’t until later that year, like November of 2019, that we actually sold our first bagels after I posted the menu on Instagram and Facebook to my neighborhood to see if they’d be interested in buying some bagels from me. So okay, all

Max Branstetter 7:46
right, can you take us to, like, the really early days of learning to make bagels? Because, as a non, not yet bagel master myself, it seems incredibly intimidating to make sure they’re actually

Jeff Perera 7:56
good, terrifying. I mean, completely terrifying. I got my hands stuck in the first batch of dough that I ever made. It was so wet and sticky that I couldn’t get my hands out of it. And I’m like, I’m like, Hey, babe. I’m like, come over here. I need your help. And she’s like, what? I’m like, I think there’s a number on the back of the flour the King Arthur Flour bag had a, like, a baker’s hotline. And I was like, Can you grab my phone and dial it so that I can talk to the them and see why my dough is so sticky and wet, because, like, this is what it looks like in any of the videos that I’ve seen on YouTube. And so I called the Baker’s hotline on my very first day baking bagels. And I was like, Hey, I’m trying to make some bagels. And the sweet woman on the other end of the line was like, Oh, she’s like, I’d hate for you to waste your dough. She’s like, try adding a few tablespoons of flour. It should help it. And I just kind of massaged it and worked it, and I finally got my hands free, and I made some of the ugliest, tasteless bagels I’ve ever made in my life on that first day. But they got better. You know, Daniela is an incredibly good critic. She has an excellent palette for bagels. As a New Yorker, she just kept refining and refining the palette, and I loved it. I really enjoyed what I was doing. So I was making five, six dozen bagels a day from home. I was like, mad scientist. You know, had had glass bowls with saran wrap over the top with the recipes written on it. Times like, I had charts, I had papers and ingredient lists. It was, it was a lot of fun, if for me, it kept me busy, kept my mind active, kept my hands busy, and gave me something to do. And each time she came home and the bagel got a little better. You know, it’s like, gave me a reward. Like, hey, congratulations. This bagels not as garbage as the last one. Gold Star. Yeah, Bronze Star. Bronze Stars. At first, took a few months to get to gold stars, but we once I got it the recipe right, then I started perfecting the idea of, like, how do you roll a good bagel? How do you get the shape, the color? And there’s so many facets to it. It is a, it’s a, it’s a bit of art, but it’s also a lot of science. And so I read a lot of textbooks, I watched a lot of YouTube videos. And I say textbooks not like cookbooks, because when you get into bakery text, it’s like reading science. It’s crazy. This many grams of that and do this, and the temperature has to be and think it’s pretty wild. It’s

Max Branstetter 9:59
like the. Yeah, oh yeah. Shout out the word wild. Appreciate that, but it’s like the tallest books in the world that you’re dealing with. It’s an uphill battle. So we can get the full picture. From a timing standpoint. How quickly was it from like first bagel to when you were doing like five, six batches a day, like

Jeff Perera 10:14
that. So I started making bagels in September of 19. So I was laid off August 13, 2019 started making bagels. Like the beginning of September, I was making probably three or four batches a day in the Test Kitchen phase, where I was like, just trying to get better. So all through September, October, as I finally got the recipe right, in November, I was making, I was trying to repeat it. So making three, four dozen a day, just to see if I could do it. And she Danielle, would come home and from work, and from work, and she would taste the bagel. She was like, yep, tastes like it did yesterday. And I just ziplock them and freeze them. And then she’s like, You got to get these bagels to the house. We got no room. What are you gonna do with them? And so she said, I can give this to my friends, maybe give them the neighbors, see if they’d be interested. And we started giving them away. And people love them, and they’re like, I’d buy these from you. I was like, nobody’s buying bagels from some guy who’s like a stay at home dad, who just learned how to bake a month ago in his kitchen. But I was like, Yeah, sounds like a great idea. So I made a Facebook page and Instagram page and posted some pictures and put a menu up, and I got like, four orders. It was awesome. That was like November of 2019, so September to November, so about three months. Yeah, we’ve

Max Branstetter 11:21
talked about this with many guests. Like, there’s never been a better time to learn a new skill, just because there’s so much available at our fingertips. YouTube’s obviously huge, but podcasts as well, books as well, billboards, if you want to look at no just guy, but like, was there a particular, like, I’m not going to make you remember the name of the video, but a particular, like, type of video or something on YouTube, that was kind of, like a big inflection point for you learning how to do

Jeff Perera 11:46
this. In the process, I was also making some bread. We love challah bread. So challah bread is like, what’s not to love? Yeah, I mean, what’s not to love the Hala bread? If you don’t know what Hala bread is, for some of your listeners, it’s a it’s like an egg based, like, kind of like sweet bread. It’s always yellow in color as a nice gold drink. Golden crust. But it’s distinguishing characteristic is it’s a braided loaf. And so I had said I should try to learn to make holiday bread. This would be good too. So I was playing with hollow bread, and in the process of learning how to make those long coils to braid the bread, is when I really learned how to roll the bagel dough. So it was interesting. It wasn’t even a bagel video that really gave me the skills that I needed to fine tune the shape. And I mean, I was watching people make bagel videos where they took this ball of dough and they’d push their thumbs through the center and kind of stretch the dough, and they always shrunk back up and they look like rolls. They never looked like bagels. And then finally, I got the actual rolling motion with my hands from the from the hollow bread video. So that was pretty cool.

Max Branstetter 12:46
So without revealing all your tricks, and in terms of secret recipe, I always think of plankton and SpongeBob never wants to. He’s always trying to get Mr. Crab’s secret recipe, always. But what is like something that’s really, really key if you’re going to make a good bagel,

Jeff Perera 13:02
I think you have to have quality ingredients. And it starts with your flour. Has to be a high gluten, high protein flour. And bagels really only have five ingredients. It’s the flour, water, salt, malt and yeast. That’s it. Those are the five ingredients that we have. And I think if you’re using high quality ingredients for all of them, and you are doing a proper it’s called a fermentation, but like a proof, if you’re doing a proper fermentation, or a proper proof, and you’re getting the right rise in your bagels, and you boil them, you have to boil them. If you don’t boil a bagel, it’s not a bagel, it’s just brown bread.

Max Branstetter 13:40
And you, I’m sure you’ve heard this growing up in the East Coast every I’ve heard it like a million times. Everybody says the bagels are so good in New York because the water, it’s like the best water up here. How important? How important is water in bagels?

Jeff Perera 13:52
0% important. It’s a total we went to Bagel fest in New York City in 2022 and we placed third overall on the plain bagel blind taste test. The two shops that beat us for neither of them were in New York City. So it’s like, I mean, I don’t I think New York City has a great bagel. Bagel culture in America started in New York City, and the reason that I’m even doing this is because I love going to New York City and eating bagels. There wouldn’t be a bagel business if it wasn’t for the old timers, the old bagel union and the rollers, or whatever those bagel Baker unions, if they created they did. But the water is, you know, water is odorless, colorless and tasteless, right? So? And when you start to put it into a dough and you add other ingredients, then you bake it for a period of time, I think you just lose some of that flavor. Sure, there’s minerals and like you can tell the difference between drinking like a Dasani and an avian or a Perrier or something like that, but if you put that in the bagel water, you wouldn’t know for a split

Max Branstetter 14:48
second. When you said Perrier, I thought you’re referring to your last name. I was like, that’s not how it’s pronounced,

Jeff Perera 14:53
but that’d be a crazy connection

Max Branstetter 14:56
that swimmingly brings us to I’m. Curious, like, how, how you took this thing from, like, I guess you got the in addition to getting your wife’s thumbs up and her taste buds, approval, once you started getting family and friends like that, approval, like, it started becoming more public from like, an operations or distribution side, if you could even call it back, then, what did that look like? Like? How did you start to scale up and get these sellable for more people? Part of what I

Jeff Perera 15:26
was doing was I was taking pictures and sending them to Danielle, like, every day while I was making bagels. Like, here’s my dough, here’s my bagels. Like, take a look at the work I’ve done today. You know, while she was off to work and I was at home. And I also was just documenting that along the way on Instagram and Facebook. And so I was, I built the social media presence around, like my journey and making bagels. And then once we got to the point where we realized we could probably sell these, and we had all the right licenses and insurances, and we felt comfortable, after talking to our accountants and stuff like that, that we should do this, I just posted a menu, like a simple static image menu, bagels for sale. You know, buy six for $10 here’s my flavors. And people would DM me, and I would get a DM, and I would put it into a spreadsheet, and then I would bake the bagels on the day that they wanted them. That was the November of 19, December of 19. We got a little bit of traction from neighbors and people like, word of mouth started to spread. And when I was maybe making seven orders of bagels. I was now making like, 40 orders of bagels by like, the end of December. So it was pretty good jump. This is in a week’s period of time. We’re not talking about like per day. This is like in a week. So it was, like, still not a lot of volume, beginning of 2020, so we’re like, four months into this whole thing. A food writer for the Orlando Sentinel had got bagels from my house, like, kind of undercover, and then, like, out of herself, it was like, Hey, by the way, I’m writing a whole article about how Orlando is a bagel desert, and US people from the Northeast can’t get a good bagel. But, like, I found your bagels, they’re really delicious. And there’s a couple other people that are doing some things, like, similarly, and like, I’m gonna write a whole story about it. I’m like, great. She wrote a story, it blew up a little bit more. Of course, I’m documenting that. It’s still all on social media. Tiktok was starting to kind of bubble. So I was starting to make videos, I was doing everything. And got an influencer here or there who were like, Oh man, your bagels are awesome, and they shared it, and then their followers picked it up. And so, you know, I went from like zero followers to 50 to 600 pretty quickly. And when you have 600 people who want to buy bagels off your porch, it gets pretty, like, dicey. Like, I mean, it’s a lot of messages, like, I’m back and forth and and then the pandemic set in, and people are, like, bored at home, Doom scrolling. And they hit like, Who’s this guy selling bagels? And then like, I post my menu on, you know, Sunday night at 7pm and I get 400 300 400 messages in my inbox, and it’s like, hey, good luck filtering through this like, first come first serve. And Danielle was furloughed from her job, so she was helping me, like, manage orders and doing all this stuff at home. We took so many orders in one weekend that we couldn’t fulfill them for like a month. So we didn’t take orders for like, a whole month. It took like a whole month. It took like 28 days straight of baking and rolling dough at home. And this was a lot of bagels. We were not doing like 30 dozen a day, which was a lot. I had five refrigerators in my garage to stack dough so it could ferment overnight in the fridge. It became challenging. We had bins on the front porch where people would put, you know, I put their like, A through F, and if you’re just put your bag in in the bin, and you’d come by, find your name, and you’d take your bag and you’d leave. And we did that for a while. We started doing a couple farmers markets later in 2020 when the world opened up a little bit more, when Florida opened up, hashtag Florida, and we did some farmers markets, and word spread, and we had lines, and people were waiting. And by February of 21 we were doing a Valentine’s Day market, and it poured down rain, the whole market shut down, but nobody got out of our line, like we always had a line early, nobody got out of our line. We showed up, we unloaded the bagels under the cover of like umbrellas and tarps, and sold bagels to soaking wet patrons for about an hour while it poured down rain, and then we got home, soaking wet, and I was like, we have a business. We should do something with this. I need to get out of the house at the very least. Like we should move to a storefront, do the same thing, just from a storefront. You keep your job. And she’s like, okay. Then we took a few months to find the space. Finally, someone leased to us because we had no assets, no business, no collateral. You know, when they leased to us, we announced that we had signed a lease, and we thought we would try to raise some money through a Kickstarter campaign to see if the community would support us. And in 24 hours, we raised, like, $28,000 we’re like, Okay, this is gonna be real. Danielle really dug into the whole idea of setting the shop up with me. And she was like, not loving her job at the time, because, you know, retail post covid was a tough place to work, and she she’s a quit and said, Let’s go full bagel. And we just figured it out, you know, it’s full bagel bagel. She went full bagel. Nelson, yeah, we opened it. We opened in July of. 2021 summer, yeah, summer 21 is we opened our first store. Well,

Max Branstetter 20:05
congrats on all that. That’s like, I mean, you’re, I guess that’s why you’re here. This is, like, just an incredible case study of entrepreneurship and just kind of like hitting milestones, one thing at a time, and adjusting on the fly, and just doing things in like a natural, like an organic, genuine way of being like, Hey, I’m a guy making bagels. Here’s what I’m making this week. You know, come check it out. I think, obviously, with the power of social media and the internet today, the fact that you were yourself willing to be so open and along the journey, especially in those early days, there’s no question that that contributed to this. What I don’t know if it’s been officially described at cold fall, described to cult following, but clearly passionate

Jeff Perera 20:44
fans. I’ve heard cult following before, so I’ll take it.

Max Branstetter 20:47
Yeah, we’ll give it to you. I think a lot with your journey so far, you hear the term all the time, change is the only constant, and it’s especially relevant for entrepreneurs. But I think just naturally, as humans, we hate change like, it’s really hard to get ourselves to adjust and and grow like, it takes a long, long time. Whereas, in your case, seemingly you’ve had to change like exponentially in terms of just like, you know, making a few batches at home to, oh, now we got a storefront. And fast forward. Now you have multiple storefronts in multiple states. How like mentally yourself? Well, I guess you and your wife have as well. How have you guys kind of kept your foot on the gas and kept keeping yourself open to evolve like that

Jeff Perera 21:31
when you start a business and you set out to do it for yourself, and think this is a way for me to make a living and provide for my family and live a life that we want to live. You. You go in with one mindset. You go with this, like, I can do this every day of my life. It makes me happy. We took vacations, like we would close the store for a week. It just like, go away, like, sign up on the door. Sorry. Shops closed. We’re enjoying time with our family. And people were okay with that, and they came back the next week as hungry for bagels as ever. And as we grew to a second shop, it became a little bit harder, because now you’re relying on other people, and you’ve got, like, leaders and managers helping you do other things. And you know, I’m not baking every bagel anymore, and so now I have to, like, instill this empowerment into this like, Baker to say, Hey, this is your bagel. Like, yes, our recipe, but like, you rolled this, you baked this, you serve it to the customer. You’re the one that’s creating this relationship now with the food, with this person. So it’s really about you. And I think Danielle and I just really focused on making sure that our team understood that while Jeff’s Bagel Run might have my name on it, it might be our business. It says much theirs, and it’s their community as well. And when that customer comes in, it’s like, Hey, Jeff, it’s good to see you. You want your, you know, cold brew and your rosemary, salt, Bagel, like, those are things that you just have to like. You have to know those people and start building those relationships. And do that as we’ve evolved past two stores, you know, we took a business partner in 2023 to help grow the business expert in franchising had built a business in the past. Franchising saw the path for us to really grow this that way, it became more about like, how do we select great franchisees? How do we find people who want to operate a business in a way that we’ve been operating that is successful, and that’s a different mindset? So now you’re switching, like, I bake bagels every day to like, now I find and select great franchisees, right? So it’s a totally different skill set, but it’s fun. It’s learning, and it kind of goes back to that first day, like, the first day I got my hands stuck in dough. I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve never franchised a business before. Like, this is the first time I’ve ever done that, too. So I wouldn’t say got my hands stuck in dough franchising, because we’ve got a great partner and we’ve got great resources around us, and so there’s a lot less like, you know, need to call the hotline, but we definitely are, are learning along the way, and it’s fun.

Max Branstetter 23:46
And for those listening, Jeff’s hands have been stuck in dough with this entire interview, so it’s pretty funny to come full circle. He’s the the hands and dough guy, so that flows really well to another tasty segment. There’s room for lots of puns here. I’ve been slamming but I’m curious, like, there’s a couple prongs of this, of how you’ve differentiated your brand. And so, like, one of those routes, is that actual like your bagels and your cream cheese, and just like, scrolling through your site and seeing the daily specials and the offerings you have, like, very quickly, I was like, Wow, I’ve never seen a bagel shop that has these flavors. Like, really, really cool, really, really creative. It’s like you’ve seen, you know, growing up, we loved watching those, like, Food Network specials about craziest donuts and craziest food places like that. Like, I feel like there’s kind of a culture like that in the donut space, but you don’t see that as much in the bagel space. What’s kind of your philosophy as a company in terms of, like, experimenting and trying out new bagel flavors and cream cheese flavors?

Jeff Perera 24:52
We’re fascinated with anything that we can bring from a flavor profile perspective, that’s. Into the texture and crispy, crunchy outside, and, like, Chewy, fluffy inside of a bagel, right? So I think about the popcorn flavored Jelly Bellies all the time, like you bite into it, and you can almost, like your your taste buds, like salivate, like you have, like the butter on your tongue. Yeah, you instantly start watching a movie. It’s crazy, 100% but you’re chewing a jelly bean, and it’s squishy and it’s sweet, and it has that same it’s distinctly a jelly bean, but yet it’s popcorn. And so when we, whenever I go into the lab and I’m trying to figure out, like, what I want to do with the bagel flavor, if I can get it to taste like the thing, but chew like a bagel, then I’ve won. Like, to me, that’s a home run. And so the creativity comes from the team. The creativity comes from, like, outside places. You know, I was having dinner with friends probably eight months ago, and we were having potato rolls with our hamburgers. And he’s like, Have you ever thought about making a potato bagel? I was like, No, that could be a good idea. I should try that. I was like, but the corn bagel didn’t work out too good. People didn’t love the idea of, like, a cornbread bagel.

Max Branstetter 26:02
Cornbread bagel. That sounds delicious, by the way, yeah, if you have any spare ones, you can send them. Maybe

Jeff Perera 26:07
perfected that one. So the potato bagel. I was like, I think a potato bagel seems kind of bland, but I love loaded baked potatoes. I was like, why don’t we make a loaded baked potato? So we started going into the kitchen trying to figure out, how do we make a bagel taste like a loaded baked potato? And turns out that if you use a green onion dough and you top it with salt, bacon and cheddar cheese, when you bite into it with chive and onion cream cheese, it’s just like eating a loaded baked potato with sour cream. It’s like, just so good. And that creativity comes from when we were early days and we were selling online from home, we’d sell out, like 30 seconds like our site. We would lock our site down, we’d load inventory, open the site up, like Taylor Swift tickets, and boom, they’d sell out. And so once we got into the store, like having a store, like selling out, it’s like, not cute anymore. People wanted bagels. They want you to have them. So we increased production, and we always had bagels. And, like, the scarcity was less there, but these unique flavors were the ones that became scarce, and so the bagel of the day was created. And so every day, we offer a different bagel of the day in every store, and we release that menu still to this day, Sunday nights at 7pm so you can kind of see ahead what’s coming. And it’s flavors like loaded baked potato or churro. Think this week we’re doing a bagel that is lemon blueberry, so it’s like a taste like a blueberry muffin.

Max Branstetter 27:21
So delicious. My wife, Dana, that’s two of her favorite flavors. So that’s got her name right now, every

Jeff Perera 27:25
combination, yeah, so that’s where that comes from. And again, it’s like, it’s me, my team, it’s Danielle. It’s inspiration from wherever we might be, like, oh, that could be a bagel. We just try. What’s

Max Branstetter 27:35
an example of, like, one of the most random ways that you got inspiration that turned into an actual bagel you offer?

Jeff Perera 27:42
Okay, this is wild. But I over the during the pandemic, there was a app I’m trying to move the name of it, clubhouse. I don’t know if you’re familiar thinking

Max Branstetter 27:52
about that the other day. Yeah, it’s crazy how, because, you know, that was when in podcast production, that’s when everybody is just like, is clubhouse gonna knock out podcast? Yeah, it’s funny to look at it now, but

Jeff Perera 28:03
it’s like, a clubhouse. What? Yeah, anyway, so I jumped on clubhouse, and I’m in like, one of the rooms, whatever they called him, and I happened to be in the room with the guys from food beast, and they’re, like, reviewing Instagram pages, and they’re talking about it, and I’m talking to Eli, and I’m talking to the creative director, and they’re like, Hey, your page looks great, but your food needs to do more. And I’m like, they’re like, do more video, less pictures of static bagels, more pictures of food doing things. And so I started doing that, and I started following them, and I build, like, a little relationship with Eli. And he does this thing where he, like, eats a bean and cheese burrito, like, every day, like trying every bean and cheese burrito day, 300 out of whatever. And so I was like, I should try to make a bean and cheese bagel. That’d be awesome. And I tried, and it was not there yet. So, but so, like, inspiration comes from all places, like, you know, other creators. It can come from, you know, a meal you have. I had a had a great, had a waffle at a restaurant in Las Vegas that was made with bacon and chive and it was absolutely delicious. And it’s like, so bacon and chive bagel definitely got tested. And so it’s, it’s just fun to find that inspiration from other places.

Max Branstetter 29:11
People talk about putting it on your creativity hat. I feel like you, you constantly are have your hands fixed in creativity dough, so and then the other aspect that’s really create, well, one of the other aspects about your brand that’s really creative and differentiate is, I think you’ve done a really great job of, like, having a really fun and creative culture and letting that flow through to, like, all the storefronts as well. So like, I’ve heard stories about how you know it’s like you kind of joke around with customers and give customers nicknames and things like that. And can you speak a little bit about kind of like, the culture that you go for, and how you make sure that you know in each expansion that you do, you have, you have fun with it? Yeah, 100%

Jeff Perera 29:53
I think when we started this business and I was documenting my journey in bagel making. Us on social media. It was authentically who I was. And so as that story became more about us in the shop and building it, and customers coming in, you know, like we have, you know, salt Alex, he comes in every day, gets two salt bagels and a cold brew coffee. And it’s like, when we rolled out our mobile app and we asked him to be a beta tester, he put his name in as salt Alex. And so it’s like, it’s just fun to like, know that we have this connection with our customer. We teach that, and that’s like the magic to the shop, right? Like, when you have this like place that you go, that people know who you are, they know your order, they feel comfortable coming there. That makes them want to come back. They come more frequently. Trips are increased. Revenues increase. It’s like, it’s great for business, right? But it also is a space that the community can become a part of and so we really ask our franchisees, as we’re expanding, to be involved in their community, to be looking out for hiring people who are going to have that engaging communication. Want to be talking to their customers. Want to be finding a way to make nicknames for people when they come in. By

Max Branstetter 30:59
the way, salt, Alex, would be a great nickname for what we call my, one of my best friends, Alex, when his New York sports teams lose, oh, must be in

Jeff Perera 31:08
that span. Actually,

Max Branstetter 31:10
he’s Yankees, but lots of yeah and all that, what? Well, actually the Jets is actually where it Yeah, in addition to to that sort of fun vibe. I mean, first of all, your differentiate with your name, Jeff bagel run. Can you hit on that real quick, how that idea or phrase can be? Yeah,

Jeff Perera 31:27
for sure. Jeff bagel run was just like Saturday mornings. We would go on a bagel run. We would run out to the bagel shop, grab bagels, come back. Because that’s we also remember as kids, like going to a bagel shop, which was usually like a window and like, some old grumpy guy handing you a bag of bagels. It wasn’t like the shops used, right? Like, wasn’t like the shops you see now today, where it’s like, you’re getting, like, sandwiches and lattes and like, it’s, it’s a different environment. Jeff, Bagel run was like, Hey, I’m gonna bring your bagels. I’ll deliver them to you. So it’s like, my little run of bagels to you. And that’s where the the idea came from, and the name started. I think that we’ve we still hold true to that. You know, we didn’t deliver in the beginning, but now we use some third party support there for delivery with, like, Uber DoorDash things like that. And so people can still get their bagels run to them, or they can come on a bagel run and visit us in the shop. That’s great. Yeah? It speaks

Max Branstetter 32:15
to, like, the authenticity of your brand as well. It’s like, that could have been the name, right, when you just started, too. And it’s like, no, we’re gonna turn this to the brand name too, which is awesome. Yeah? Is awesome, speaking of like, the grumpy competition out there, which I know we’re we don’t we, don’t we don’t, you know, compare ourselves to others. We’re talking about growing ourselves. But you’re right. When you think about, like a New York bagel place, you think about like, these are probably family businesses that have been around for generations. And, you know, wake up at two in the morning to bake every day and kind of have, like, no frills, just kind of, it’s all about the food. I know you don’t want to, like disrespect those but you also your brand is, like, a very different kind of modern approach to that. How do you navigate that? Like making sure that you kind of try to lift the baker world higher, if you will, without disrespecting those OG ones.

Jeff Perera 33:02
You gotta tip your hat to the folks who did it before you, because, you know, bagels are not new. It’s not new. I didn’t create a new

Max Branstetter 33:08
product. You created the world’s first bagel. Congratulations.

Jeff Perera 33:11
Amazing. I had no idea. Yeah. So you don’t, yeah. We’re not here to disparage our competitors, like there’s not enough bagels in the world. We need more bagels for everybody. And so I think that if you’re building a business that’s community based, that’s going to be something that, you know, people can get behind and get behind you as the owner of that business. It’s going to feel supportive, it’s going to employ people, it’s going to take care of people in that community, and that it’s going to feed people in that community, which is pretty great. You know, we are differentiated. We we don’t start baking at 2am we start our bakes closer to 5am just so we could have the bare minimum amount of bagels on the rack when we open the door to fulfill any pre orders and like those early customers. But then we’re baking fresh throughout the day, so we are, like, oven on. We’ve built a lot of technology behind it the scene so that our bakers can kind of anticipate what’s coming and prepare just in time bagels, so that you’re getting a very fresh baked, or even a hot from the oven baked bagel that you know, most people have never had a hot bagel. Like they said, they think they’ve had a hot bagel, but they pulled it out of a plastic bag from a grocery store. The sign says, hot, yeah, the sign or, like, they put it in their toaster at home, and they’re like, Yeah, eat my bagels hot every morning. I’m like, No. Like, you don’t know. Like, you haven’t been there. So like that, fresh baked from the oven, Bagel is just a different experience. And so in the store, we, we don’t prepare anything. We really, truly operate as like a retail bakery. So we don’t prepare anything for you. We’ll slice your bagel if you ask, we’ll slice them. We’re kind all the cream cheese served on the side, so you can put on as much or as little as you want. And we have a full coffee bar offering, but that’s that’s really like the extent of what we offer in the store. So it is a it is a bit different. You know, you can’t go to bacon, egg and cheese with ketchup in our shop, but you can make a mean one when you get home

Max Branstetter 34:54
with it well, as if you don’t go through enough rush orders, especially the homemade ones in the early days. Is, let’s wrap things up with rapid fire. Q, A, you ready for Let’s go. Let’s do it all right, let’s get wild. Let’s bake some bagels here, the first one ever, besides the finger stuck in dough story in the early days. What’s another? Just kind of silly, embarrassing story from your journey with the company so far?

Jeff Perera 35:14
Ah, the amount of times I like, just ruined dough because your hands are in it. No, just no. I mean, after we after, once, I projected the dose, like, scaling was hard, right? Like, so, like, going from making a little batch of two dozen bagels to six dozen to eight dozen, it became hard. So a lot of times, like I would the dough temperature would be getting too hot when I was trying to roll it, and I wouldn’t get it refrigerated fast enough to cool down during the fermentation. Overnight, I come in the next morning, I have these giant, puffy, over stuffed bagels. And customers would come in like, hey, sorry, I only have like, 12 dozen bagels today because I ruined the other 60 that I made for you because I’m an idiot. So that was, like, those parts were embarrassing. That was hard. Because, like, when you, when you open your doors to somebody, you’re like, hey, I want to serve you. I want to give you something. Like, didn’t have it for them. That

Max Branstetter 35:59
sucked. All right, what is like a dream, either bagel or cream cheese flavor that, for whatever reasons you just don’t think at work, or maybe, like, legally or regulatory, we can’t do it, but would be a fun one in theory.

Jeff Perera 36:13
Have you had a beef on wax sandwich? You know? Have, you know, beef on wacky is, it’s like

Max Branstetter 36:18
the, I know what it Yeah. Wait, where’s that? Where’s that from? Again, that’s like a buffalo thing. Yeah, I don’t know if I have it’s possible I do when I was really young, but I’ve heard about it, right? So come

Jeff Perera 36:25
a whack is like a, kind of, like a crispy roll, soft inside crispy roll, and it’s topped with caraway seeds and salt, and then you put like beef on top with like a Aju, and it’s like, delicious. It’s kind of like a version of a French dip, but it’s like, smaller. And anyway, so I want to make a I want to make, like, a beef on weck bagel that’s kind of what’s in R D right now. Because I want, like, I’m trying to infuse this flavor of, like, beef into bread that, like, salty Caraway top on it. So I’m working on that, but I think we’re gonna get there. We made a stuffing bagel last year, like, so I we have a bagel Thanksgiving time. We call it Nana’s stuffing, and it tastes just like my mother in law’s stuffing that she makes at Thanksgiving. It’s ridiculous. It’s so good.

Max Branstetter 37:04
That’s glory. You have some of the like, let’s forget bagels. You have some of the best flavors I’ve heard of, just like in general. You know, it’s just banning beyond the category too. This is salivating, all right? What is I know in a previous life probably seems like, many lifetimes ago, several universes ago. You know, you’ve worked for some of, like, the biggest brands out there today, like Target, Adidas, The North Face, Apple. What is it about, like, so like brands that are that big, is there, like, a consistent thing about those brands, or those companies that you notice that maybe hints to why they’re so big and successful, I

Jeff Perera 37:41
think they have a great brand identity. You know exactly who they are based on the logo. You know exactly who they are when you walk into that shop, the feeling of that experience is the same or very similar. Target’s a huge 1600 stores. They have tons of stores. It’s hard, but like I think when you walk into a Target store, you walk into a Target store, you sort of have an idea of what to expect from a shopping experience. When you walk into Apple, you know what you’re getting when you buy something from The North Face you you have a an expectation for the quality or performance, and so that that brand and that, like, high level of brand execution, I think, is what differentiates them.

Max Branstetter 38:17
Yeah, that’s a great answer. Because actually, when it probably when I was rattling those off, those you listening and watching are instantly thinking of like the logo when you first think of it. So, yeah, identity is everything, all right. And then last one, I’ve been very curious about this from the very beginning. How do you stay in shape when eating so many bagels and taste testing so many bagels, I

Jeff Perera 38:40
try to limit myself to one bagel a day, and that’s it keeps the doctor away. That’s the one bagel a day keeps the doctor away. I think I also try to pair it with like a well rounded diet the rest of the time, so lots of protein and vegetables when I’m not eating the bagels. But there’s been plenty of there’s also been plenty of three or four bagel days in my in recent days, so it’s fine, too. Oh, I

Max Branstetter 39:03
don’t blame you. That’s, yeah, you’re in a very delicious, dangerous position. But I just when you, when you were talking through the when you started making, like, several batches today, I’m like, Oh my God, how many of these are being

Jeff Perera 39:12
eaten per day? We ate so many bagels. It was so painful. Somebody has to taste

Max Branstetter 39:17
test. Tough job. Well, Jeff, Jeff’s bagel. Run D Jeff. Thank you so much for sharing your story and for all you do and all the crazy, fun, wild experimentation that you do. Thank you really, just big fan of your brand. If I could, I would have one of your bagels every day too. But thank you so much. Where’s the best place for people to try out your bagels or learn more about you or your brand?

Jeff Perera 39:40
I think you can find us everywhere, at Jeff’s bagel run, it’s all the platforms jeffspagel run.com, is where we have our website. Highly recommend you download our mobile app, either in your Apple App Store or your Google Play Store. It’s there and available that give you all your bagels of the day and keep you up to date on what’s happening for.

Max Branstetter 39:59
Awesome. And then last thing, final thoughts, stages, yours. It could be a quote I usually say words to, to live by, but I think it’s words to, is it need dough by or is it roll dough by words? Words to bagel, pie,

Jeff Perera 40:13
something to roll. We can roll with it. I’m gonna go back to something I alluded to earlier. I think it’s, I can’t remember who the quotes attributed to but comparison is a thief of joy. Try not to compare yourself too much. Enjoy your life. It’s pretty good.

Max Branstetter 40:27
You’re on a roll.

Jeff Perera 40:30
What a great fun. I love it.

Max Branstetter 40:35
Please. No more puns. I am bageling you. Thank you so much, Jeff from Jeff’s bagel run for coming on Wild Bsiness Growth, sharing your wild and tasty story, and thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning into another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow Wild Business Growth on your favorite podcast app. Tell a friend about the podcast and hit subscribe on YouTube for the video versions YouTube is @MaxBranstetter don’t ask me how to spell my last name. You can learn all things about the podcast, about me, about podcast production and about the Podcasting to the Max newsletter every Thursday at MaxPodcasting.com and until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!