Tali’s Bagels

Meet Talia Schwartz & Kelly Bongolan of Tali’s Bagels!

Specialty: NY Style Bagels and Schmears

What do you wish you had known before you started your business?
We wish we would've known how challenging scaling can be producing hand-made products. We started our business selling to customers on IG and baking from home and it was a big adjustment preparing for farmers markets at a much larger scale.

What are you most proud of about your business?
We are amazed every day at our progress and success in such a short period of time. We are a two-person team with no formal culinary training, but our extreme determination and surrounding ourselves with consummate professionals have been our keys to success.

What do you love most about being a food entrepreneur? 
What excites us the most about being food entrepreneurs is when a first time customer tries our bagels and then comes back a few minutes later craving more. For our business in particular, it's extremely gratifying when we hear the feedback that our bagels taste like true New York bagels.

What’s one piece of advice you have for other food entrepreneurs?
Make sure you really love what you make and then just go for it! Taking the plunge is one of the hardest parts.

What makes your business unique/special?
For starters, we sell mini bagels! Half the size and twice as cute. We are the only New York-style bagels on the island made by a true New York Jew. We make all of our schmears including our cream cheese bases entirely from scratch and we painstakingly boil and bake our bagels in the authentic New York tradition.

What’s your best seller at the moment?
Our most ordered item is Tali's Bagel Flight, where you select 3 bagels and 3 schmears of your choice. Our most popular bagel is our everything mini matched with our lomi lox schmear.

What's next for you and business?
For now we are focused on expanding into more markets and creating wholesale partnerships with small businesses on the island.