B Bagels — Restaurant in Jersey City

Update: They are off and running. I've updated from a previous rating of 3. Looks like they've ironed out the kinks in their recipe & operations. If you're looking for a quick grab and go or an office bagel run for your staff, you'll likely be able to do so now w/o waiting eons for your food. Large, high quality bagels that are clearly made in house and same day. Get the half dozen deal if you're buying for the entire family or office. If you want to save your leftovers, just syran wrap tightly and put in an airtight bin. They won't taste the same, but it'll still be better than Dunkin's or Au bon Pain.

Came here on their 3rd day opening, so will cut them some slack for all the ops issues and will return and update this review 2 months from now when they've had the chance to improve. JC is a fickle diva - she's rooting for you (b/c we need a 'legit' NYC bagel outside of NYC), but she will just as quickly scorn you for under-delivering.

Food: Bagel was obviously fresh (they don't sell day old merch). It has a nice crispy, crusty exterior, is of a nice size (5 inch), but inside is too pillowy - the ones in the bottom of my bag were dented and misshapen by the time I walked home. Probably too much yeast or overproofing. What would make it perfect is if it was denser & had a chewy texture to it. This is the quintessential texture to a NYC bagel.

Shop interior: Clean, ample standing space w/ grab and go refrigerated drinks. No tables / chairs for loitering, which is the right call for such as high traffic place.

Queue mgmt: Horrific. Lines unnecessarily out the door. A 30-75 min wait w/ lines wrapped around the corner. This will kill your business in the long run after novelty wears out. You want to establish a strong group of regulars that visit multiple times a wk if not daily - you can't do this if you need to wait and people have to go to work. Here's my suggestions to the owner to optimize.

Designate lanes, rope off areas for ordering vs. waiting so you process orders faster and don't have pets, children running amok Create specialized roles for each employee. Everyone was everywhere all at once taking orders, triaging, ringing ppl up - it was slow & chaotic. Get 1-2 ppl to exclusively take orders & work the registers. Add another card reader for peak traffic hrs. Get 1-2 people to triage your tickets. Cold / off the shelf orders are managed exclusively by front of house. Hot orders are managed exclusively by the back kitchen. This means for split orders (e.g. coffee plus hot sandwich) you need carbon paper - one stays up front, the other goes back and the person triaging reconciles orders when they are ready. This way, you don't hold up your line for a bunch of hot orders when you can easily pound out some easy grab n go orders in the meantime. Time is money. For hot orders, people also appreciate getting their beverages in hand while they wait. On cold days, having your coffee ready mitigates the wait.

Good luck! We're...

I placed an order through uber eats and it was wrong. I called the store to let them know it was wrong and the attendant agreed. I asked to have the correct order sent to me. He said that it was not possible to send anyone knowing it was not my fault. He offered giving me two bagel if I drove up there. I paid for a specific order and it was messed up and unable to be corrected unless I spent my time and gas to drive up there having paid for delivery. I’m super disappointed and was not expecting this from the store manager. I am super frustrated to find out this is how business is and non rectified correctly.

Reply:

Thank you for your response. I want to clarify a few things because your reply misrepresents what happened and why I was frustrated.

I never demanded that your employee personally deliver the bagel — I simply asked if there was any way the correct item could be sent, since the mistake wasn’t mine and I had already paid for both the item and the delivery. I understand there may be limitations with Uber Eats, but that wasn’t communicated clearly. Instead, I was told my only option was to drive to the store myself. That just doesn’t feel fair.

Also, the issue wasn’t just a “cream cheese mix-up.” The wrong type made the entire bagel inedible for me. I have a nut allergy and received the wrong spread. Mistakes like this can be serious, not just inconvenient.

Yes, I was frustrated — not because people aren’t allowed to make mistakes, but because I didn’t feel like the response matched the problem. Offering free bagels is a nice gesture, but still requires me to go out of my way to fix something I didn’t cause.

I didn’t leave a review to “bash” anyone — I left it because I felt the situation wasn’t handled with much care or understanding. And I did not hang up in your employee’s face — the call ended after it became clear there was no resolution unless I came in myself.

I support small businesses and want to see them succeed, but part of that includes taking responsibility when things go wrong — especially when food and potential allergens...

This is a poor bagel. From a baker's perspective, there are multiple major flaws. Take a look at the picture: see those huge pockets of air surrounded by really dense crumb? That's a sign of poor gluten development and underfermentation. The bakers are not spending enough time kneading the dough and letting fermentation take place, and you end up with a really dense, unpleasant crumb with massive holes. Baking takes time, and it's clear they aren't investing that properly.

Now one thing these bagels do is pass the "looks test": look at that beautiful browning! Bakers work hard to achieve the perfect browning on their crusts. Unfortunately, B Bagels has taken a shortcut here: they've given their bagels a sugar loaded egg wash before baking that forces the browning without the actual work. You see, proper browning is a result of complex sugars produced from a long, slow fermentation being present in the dough; B Bagels don't have that, as discussed above, and so they fake it by coating the outside of the bagels with sugar. Sugar you can taste in every bite.

The flavor of the bagels, as we can now expect from the above, is a disaster. The rushed fermentation has allowed no time for complex flavors to develop, and the dough is also undersalted to the point where the bagel has almost no flavor at all besides the sugary sweetness. I can't help but wonder if they've intentionally undersalted the dough in order to try to make fermentation even faster, as salt naturally inhibits fermentation.

Maybe they are only doing this as a result of their huge lines, and they feel like they are forced to take shortcuts in order to meet demand. But as it stands, this is a truly poor product and one I can't recommend in...