'PopUp Bagels' Expands to Arlington, VA

Hi, it's Steve. What's your work now? Oh my gosh, everybody looks so amazing. I know, they're so pretty. I know, and all the colors are perfect, too. All right, here's the deal. A viral sensation you've probably seen on your timeline is here in the Good Day Cafe. Pop-Up Bagels is expanding to, drumroll please, Arlington, with the claim they offered the perfect bagel. Franchisee Brian Harrington is back with us with a taste and how to perfect the grip, rip, and dip. First of all, congratulations. You came in when you opened up in Georgetown. You're in Bethesda, and now Arlington. Yeah. Gone fast. Three shops in five months here in the DMV. Flying through it. So tell me about Ballston and what it is that you're looking for there, because you had, it sounds like, a pretty good opening weekend. It was a great opening weekend. The energy was incredible. The crowds were great. It's just a community where kind of all the folks that tend to love Pop-Up Bagels, they live there, they work there, they do yoga and Pilates there, and I've never seen more runners on Saturday morning than running down Wilson Boulevard in the morning. I think we need to put, like, a refreshment station out on Wilson Boulevard for all the runners in that town. It wasn't even final training for the Marine Corps Marathon either. It was just a regular Saturday in Ballston. So here's the thing with pop-up bagels. If you haven't tried it yet, give it a go. But you really emphasize the keep it simple kind of mantra, right? It is just about the bagels. We don't overcomplicate it. We don't make sandwiches. We don't have any eggs or turkey or lettuce and tomato. It is a hot, fresh bagel right out of the oven. Every six to seven minutes, that bagel comes out of the oven, right in the bag, right across the counter to our guests. They find the closest place they can to sit down, tear that bagel open, dip it into one of our awesome schmears, and it's a pretty fantastic experience. I mean, it sounds so simple in theory, but it works. And you guys have done very well with a bunch of locations, I mean, a ton of locations everywhere, but three locations now in the DMV with more to come. We'll save that one for another day. But that being said, the grip, the rip. The dip. Walk me through the process and what we should be doing here. I'm going to grab... Well, let's pick your bagel first. One and everything bagel. Go ahead. So one of the... That's the everything? I'm grabbing everything. And then I brought a little sample. Oh, you didn't tell me they were still warm. Yeah, of course they're warm. This is great. All right, this is Grillo's Dill Pickle, our standard scallion and plain cream cheese, and we have this awesome maple butter as well if you're into the sweet. All right, so the floor guy's going to hate me because I'm just going to make a mess here, and I'm going to let them know up front, but I've got to try the pickle. The Grillo's Pickle is incredible. So we're literally just, and when you do this, right, you're going to get some bagels, and then you're going to get a cream cheese, and then you literally are just... Just pick it apart, dip it in, and eat it. Pick it apart, dip it in, and eat it. So this pickle, you don't always have this, do you? Good to see you. Now, so, 26 times a year, every two weeks, we bring out a limited time schmear. And this one for this week, this week and next week is a partnership with Grillo's. We actually did a single one-time LTO with them in our Boston market when we opened the first shop in Boston. And it was such a success in Boston that we now have done it nationally two times with them. Yeah. You can keep talking because I'm still chewing. That's all right. I don't want to be rude to the viewers out there. That is really good. I would not, I mean, I guess it makes sense. You put pickles on sandwiches. Why not with your bagels too? But the pickle flavor. And there's chunks of pickle in there, too. Don't think I don't see that. The pickle flavor really works well with it. A lot of times, if we talked about this off camera, people will go for the sweet, the sweeter, like, kind of cream cheese. Yeah, I'm a savory guy. Like, I prefer salty to sweet. Like, for example, we have a butter this week that's a Sabatino truffle butter as well. So, like, if you're into the really savory and the really kind of rich flavors, that Sabatino truffle is incredible. That's great. I know you did a local collab for the opening over the weekend. You said that this is what you're doing now. You mentioned it real quick, but is it every two weeks it's a different flavor? Yeah, so every week we'll roll a new butter or a new cream cheese, and they overlap each other. In Boston, for example, we did a collaboration with Good Company Donuts, who's like a staple in the community, an awesome business, great people, great owners. And I literally walked in the shop, and I'm like, I see these fall donuts there. They were incredible. A schmear for the opening that was an apple cider, maple brown sugar schmear, and it was gone in like four hours in the shop. So basically, if you see a flavor or you think of a flavor, you're like, I can put that in there. We can make a schmear out of that for sure. We'll see if we can come up with a flavor for you. Maybe we can debut one here for a good day. Stick around, Brian. We're going to take a short break, and we'll have more. We'll get some more folks coming to join us. I think when you break out the bagels, the people will come. We'll see you after this.