Philly Bagels - South Street — Restaurant in Philadelphia

The first time I went to this shop, it was a Saturday morning $h!tshow. There is no room to stand and a lot of the people standing around were just Uber drivers waiting on multiple orders. So you don't actually know that, though there are only 15 "customers" and 4 people making the bagels, you might be waiting 25-30 minutes to get a sandwich. They also are awful at being able to manage the amount of people shuffling through the space. The order line misses with a pick-up line, which creates extra confusion and a longer line. I got a sausage, eggs, and cheese on an everything bagel. I haven't had such a bad breakfast sandwich in a long time. The bagels are pretty average for a specialty bagel shop. The second time I went back was a Friday morning before working, thinking my sub-par experience was just the Saturday morning rush. First, there are no signs that show a $5 minimum for credit cards, so I had to get two bagels with cream cheese or leave. The lady looked at me like this had been obvious and complete apathy for me not wanting to double my order just to fit their credit card limit. Then, they gave my second bagel that I paid for away to the one other person in the shop. I told the person they had given my bagel to the wrong person, to which she apologized and just went about going to make another bagel.... the guy was still in the shop and he gave me a bagel. She could have easily just told him, but watched him open up the bag and discover she had messed up.

This place is, at a minimum, is better than your regular neighborhood deli, but doesn't have...

7.2024 THIS IS STILL TO THIS DAY My spot. Geneva, Mary Ann, and the rest of the staff are just a delight. I will never stop giving them my money, no matter how broke I get!! Haha. Thank you all for making my days extra special!! The veggie cream cheese is AMAZING. It's a new recipe and it's out of this world!! The everything bagel, veggie CC, and crispy bacon is my usual. Geneva knows as soon as I walk through the door what I'm going to order. Love it and y'all!! Thank you!!!

Original review: My go-to bagel spot for 20 years (on and off).I'll never forget the first time having one of their bagels. It was love at first bite. It was their french toast bagel with a sweet cream cheese (can't remember exactly). My absolute favorite is their everything bagel. I was so excited when they opened up on Passyunk, closer to my neighborhood. I only went once. Only because I started working in Society Hill. Almost 3 years now and it took my coworker to remind me of how close the original SSB is to my place of employment. Been there several times in the last few weeks. I know.. I know. How could I be a TRUE SS bagel lover and not realize?? Consistently delicious. The staff- super sweet and gracious- even when handling the most difficult of customers. Not me, but I did witness a customer just about have a hissy fit, in an easy to fix situation. The customer was out of line but the staff killed the customer with kindness and handled it graciously. Much better...

EDIT: Someone read this and changes were made and it’s to support a small chain in Philly that will listen and apply customer feedback. Literally my favorite bagel spot in Philly!

This pains me to write because this used to be my favorite bagel spot. I used to go to their multiple locations until I finally landed here as it looks like they make their bagels here. There seems to be an obvious issue with employee turnover. I can only imagine that they 1) are not properly paying their employees causing them to leave 2) don’t have a standard for training their employees because with this most recent turn over the construction of the sandwiches has been horrible. The last 4 times that I’ve come here I’ve ordered the same sandwich a lox special. I’ve either gotten a burnt bagel, little to no cream cheese, minimal lox, the wrong bagel, and to top it off I’m paying anywhere between $12 to $14 for the bagel. I can understand raising prices as food prices change but there is no reason I should be paying a higher price and receiving less on the bagel. Or I can understand someone’s first week, hence why I came back and gave it another go, but there’s no improvement. It’s unfortunate cause I really loved coming to this place, and this was my regular breakfast spot two to three times a week. Hopefully someone is actually reading these and can implement...