I LUV a great Locally owned small business. And I LUV discovering a great story behind it. This area has LOTS and I that is a testament to the community, its residents.
Years ago, out running errands along Semoran Boulevard, I discovered Bagel King. I got a sandwich on one of the best bagels I’d ever had and guess I thought, dang, this must be one of the best items on the menu. I kept going back and now know it’s just one of those places in which everything on the menu is delicious. I also learned its roots in Orlando date back to 1977. In the Winter Park area, this place is a Local tradition. And, yeah, lots and lots of my friends knew about it before I did.
“My dad had a bagel store in New York and he was very successful,” owner Tinamarie Perrotta Schmit tells me of its origins. “My sister had diabetes, juvenile diabetes, and she was very ill. Very, very ill. And the doctor said, you know, I don’t think she’ll survive another winter here. That’s how bad it was. So we moved to Florida. And Dad was like, let’s open a bagel store here. And we opened on the corner of Aloma & 436.”
Tinamarie is the sort of small business person who makes you -- no matter how much you may LUV small businesses already -- LUV them that much more. She is enthusiastic, she is energetic, she is used to going in twenty different directions all at once. You don't have to talk to her long to know the only thing she LUVs more than Bagel King and its customers is her own family.
That center for that original location now includes Friendly Confines, a Habeneros Mexican restaurant. She said the first space was “a teeny tiny store with a screened door. Didn’t have air conditioning. Just a full-on bakery. And all of us kids helped my dad.” A picture of her and her sisters, often a cover shot on their Facebook page, was taken the day it opened, can now be found somewhere in each location. Tinamarie is pictured on the far right, smiling broadly, with pigtails. I tease her a bit about looking like Cindy Brady. It’s classic Americana in every way, the kind of picture that takes you back to another time and place, when things were simpler. Social media and the internet were decades into the future, but community, belief in it, was strong.
“So we helped my father build it. He slept on a cot there. I remember it took him a year to make a hundred dollars a day. And he came home and was like, ‘I broke a hundred dollars today! And we were all like: ‘Yay, Dad!’”. That was 43 years ago, the same year Star Wars debuted, one year after the American bicentennial, when disco and Studio 54 were both big. They'll officially celebrate #44 in February of next year.
“That’s my earliest memory," she says, referring to that picture. "That and my Dad baking. I was on a stool behind the counter. I helped the customers even then. It was the family business, super Italian, we’re all in it.”
Bagel King bills itself as the home of the kettle-baked bagel and it’s a process Tinamarie ensures me means a better, tastier bagel. Bagels are boiled first, producing a crispy outside, while staying soft beneath. Their bagels are cooked in an 80 year old stove, lined with bricks. Each and every day, they produce almost 30 varieties of different bagels, with a baker coming in each morning (late night) at 1:30 a.m. The dough to make those bagels is always made the previous day, creating an ongoing, complex supply chain operating all under one roof.
“Every single pastry is made here. Every single cookie is made here. Every single salad is made here. Every single cream cheese is made here.” she shares, proudly. Much -- make that most -- made from scratch.
Tinamarie begins naming off the in-house made items and the list is long. “Tuna salad, egg salad, honey walnut chicken salad, the turkey salad, the white fish salad.” While I thought the recipes may all be family ones, she says many of the salad recipes are attributable to one-time beLUVed Orlando deli Ronnie’s.
“When I was younger,” she says, “Larry Leckhart come into bagel King and his store was already sold. He was retired. I was in my early 20s. And he said, ‘I don’t like your tuna fish or your white fish salad or you egg salad’. And I said you don’t. Well, then help me. So he came in the back room and he showed me how to do catering, how to do salads, how to do everything.”
Excited even by the memory, she adds, “That’s the coolest thing ever.” Another one-time successful restauranteur from up north named Lenny Levine did the same thing, she said. As she talks, you hear in her voice the appreciation, the responsibility she feels to make them proud of their contributions.
We talk about influences and family and I share a memory from two years ago when a hurricane was approaching the eastern coast of Florida. After making our home and yard ready, and locking ourselves inside, of course, the dang thing slowed. Cabin fever can set in quickly and we were ready to get out. And we were not alone. It was a Sunday morning and while everything around seemed to be closed, there was Bagel King, a line out the door. As we moved up in the line, of course, we looked around to see friends and neighbors. Just another -- and yet not just another -- Sunday at Bagel King. The ability to get out and enjoy a yummy meal surely much appreciated about everyone in the room.
“It’s a family community,” she says enthusiastically, speaking of the area they both operate their business and call home. “One time we had a hurricane. This is twenty years ago – my daughter is in a stroller – okay, this is 24 years ago – she’s 26 now – and I come in just to see how the store is because we had a hurricane the night before. And only half the building had power. I was like darn. But then, you know, we have gas ovens. The bagel oven is going to work. We can make bagels. We can make coffee. We can make this, we can make that. The welcome coolers were working but the dining room was dark. Let’s just see what happens. Maybe we should make some bagels and see. And we waited for the community to wake up and then the place was packed. This is before social media, anything. And this woman was like, let me take your bagel – bagel (laughs) – let me take your baby and she was wheeling her around the store. I’m talking to customers. It was like an open house. It was so nice! When I say a hundred people came in, we were jam packed. People said, Tina, they were all saying this is so nice. Nothing is open. It’s so nice that you’re open for your community. And that’s when I realized that a hurricane, any time something happens that’s dramatic, I should always open because our community really appreciates it.”
Covid 19, of course, has presented new challenges for Bagel King, as well as all small businesses. Mother’s Day this year, so recently after businesses were allowed to open their doors again, was especially problematic and a day Tinamarie says was the most frustrating during her time operating the family business. A letter of apology was posted to their social media, expressing regret at the experience had by some. It was touching, demonstrative of the obvious LUV she has for the business, appreciation of her customer base. Not surprisingly, the following outpouring of support from patrons was overwhelming. As much as Bagel King appreciates its customers, it is certain its customers appreciate Bagel King.
“It’s really hard,” she says. “It’s awful. I feel so bad for all small businesses. We’ve been down down 50%. We do a ton of to-gos.” But catering, one of the biggest revenue streams for the business, with weddings, large meetings and other gatherings, basically went away for months. Bagel King employs 40 individuals for both in-store and catering.
“Ninety percent of customers are so nice,” she says of the recent challenges. She specifically mentions generous tipping for employees. “I can tell they really feel for us.”
Customers aren’t just important to Bagel King, but some even appear on the menu. I ask her about the interesting names for items which can surely must have a story behind them.
“Items named for people,” she says, thinking, “the naming thing started with my Dad. This is pre-'Frank’s Special'. That wasn’t even a thought yet. I said, Dad, we should stuff a knish. This is going back so long ago, 35 years ago. When we just had the bakery. We had a little deli in there and I said, hey, we should stuff a knish and put some meat and cheese in there, sell this. So he makes up a poster: Tinamarie’s Stuffed Knish. (Laughing) I’m like great, I’m a stuffed knish. But he thought it was so cute to name it after me. And so people started coming in and saying, hey, make this for me and that developed more and more. And so I say, if it sells really good, I’m going to name it after you. So, people would come in and say, Tina, try this, try that. And so Frank is my Dad, Desi is my niece, Casey is my nephew. So I started naming things after family members. But there’s a bunch of stuff on there (the menu) named after my friends.”
I specifically mentioned one I’ve wondered about, “Odds Morning After.” She laughs and explains, “We worked together at Bagel King over 30 years ago!”
Tinamarie hasn’t always been at the family business, got a degree in nursing and lived in Atlanta, working at its Shepherds Spinal Clinic for a number of years. But she returned to the area around 25 and got back into the bagel business.
She tells me her number one job, however, is being a Mom, having three daughters of her own. And, yes, you just may find one of them working at Bagel King in Casselberry. She has lots of menu favorites, says she eats their smoke salmon every day and brags about her super low cholesterol.
When a family has such a constant presence of one food in their lives for approaching half a century, can it still be something they all LUV? The answer is a obviously yes. While Tinamarie says she has their smoked salmon every day, and brags about the resulting cholesterol level, yes, she says of her kids: “They eat a bagel everyday! We LUV bagels!"
I ask what one thing makes her most proud and she quickly responds its the longevity of the family business, their Local following from customers. Many of which, she says, she knows will show up each week like clock work. “People will say such nice things about us on Facebook. Our following is amazing. We have customers who have been coming here over 30 years. They're so passionate about Bagel King."
Passion, apparently, can be quite contagious.