Connecticut’s fast-growing PopUp Bagels chain hopes to roll in the dough with a San Antonio expansion.
The company, which holds cult-like status on its upper East Coast home turf, will open a location at 7959 Broadway Street, Suite 506, around the end of the year, state regulatory filings show. Work on the $350,000 storefront will get underway later this month, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
PopUp’s jump into San Antonio comes after the brand this summer teased plans for a 12-store expansion targeting Texas’ major urban markets.
The company now operates more than 50 stores, largely along the East Coast and in California, and it’s touted a goal of reaching 300 nationwide. Although just five years old, the business has drawn funding both from institutional investors and celebrity backers including Paul Rudd, Michael Strahan, Michael Phelps and JJ Watt.
PopUp, which grew out of founder Adam Goldberg’s pandemic baking experiment, has drawn fans for its stripped-down approach. The stores serve up whole bagels hot from the oven and nothing else except a rotating selection of schmears.
Traditional New York-style bagels are big, dense and chewy and typically are sliced down the middle before being spread with a topping. PopUp’s are smaller, airier and are meant to be torn like a baguette and dipped.
“We’re bringing our stores to places where people don’t necessarily think of themselves as ‘bagel people’,” Goldberg said in a media statement from earlier this year. “We’re introducing bagels into their routines.”
We’ll see if that includes a city where breakfast tacos have long been the morning carbo-load of choice.
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