A New York bagel maker is already making plans to expand the bakery it built in Pennsylvania two years ago.
Always Bagels, with a home base on Long Island, specializes in old-fashioned bagels that are made without the preservatives common in many other baked goods sold in the grocery store. In 2010 it built a 71,000-square foot bakery in Lebanon, where it makes some of the bagels that are sold across the United States and Canada, mostly at supermarkets. While the bagels have a five-day shelf life, they're frozen after being baked so they taste fresh after being reheated.
The design of the bakery in Lebanon doesn't include separate lines for bagels that are packaged for sale directly to the customer and bagels that are destined for the self-service bins at the store. Always Bagels expects to see demand for its pre-packaged bagels grow, company VP Anthony Pariti says. Many customers prefer the convenience of bagels that can be purchased in packages a few at a time, he says, and others are hesitant to expose themselves to germs by reaching for bagels in self-service bins available to thousands of other customers.
An expansion at the Lebanon bakery is still in the planning stages. Pariti says it would have separate production areas for the two categories of bagels. It would add between 40,000 and 50,000 square feet to the bakery, and construction would start in about a year.
Source: Anthony Pariti, Always Bagels
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen