Date: Fri 03-Nov-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-13

Quick Words:

Al-Mayer-bagels-Mayer's

Full Text:

[opening of bagel shop & interview w/ Al Mayer, Mayer's Bagels]

MayerMan's Bagels Break The Mold

(with cuts)

By Shannon Hicks

By streamlining the bagel-making process, Al Mayer has come up with a bagel

that comes in innumerable flavors and allows for a creative mind like his to

offer a variety competitors will not always be able to imitate.

Mayer, the man and the name behind the newly-opened Mayer's Bagels in Danbury,

has a recipe for great bagel dough. He takes this dough and creates great

bagels, adding toppings to many - 70 percent of his business comes from plain

bagels topped with concessions such as sesame seeds, garlic or salt - or

integrating flavors such as spinach, cheese, cracked whole wheat, blueberries,

etc, to the rest.

With a streamlined baking process that has eliminated the kettles bagels are

traditionally boiled in, Mayer has come up with a way to get more flavors,

more toppings... more variety.

"It's a non-traditional approach," MayerMan, a/k/a Al Mayer, admits, "but it

allows for variety, and that's what the public is looking for."

Rather than boil bagel dough - which gives bagels their chewiness - Al Mayer

has devised an operation where the dough, all made from scratch in his Danbury

store by baker Andrew Barry, is shaped into bagels, and proofed, which allows

the bagel dough to rise.

The dough is sprayed with water and then steamed, rather than boiled. After

the dough is steamed, Mayer's bakers "seed the bagels" - putting loads of

toppings on the bagels. With the soft dough now acting like a paste, more

topping stick to Mayers' bagels than traditional bagels, where most toppings

tend to come off either during the baking process or moving from oven to bin

to customer.

After "seeding," the bagels are then baked. The result is a bagel that still

has a crunchy outside and chewy inside.

Steaming the bagels rather than boiling them allows not only for extra

toppings to grab hold of the outside of the bagel, but real flavors to be

cooked inside a bagel.

"If a bakery bakes its bagels traditionally and offers a cheddar cheese

bagel," MayerMan says, "you aren't getting a bagel with cheddar cheese inside

it. During the boiling process, the cheese is going to separate from the

dough. What you get, instead, is a bagel with cheese flavoring ."

Open now for just over a month (the store celebrated its grand opening

September 23), Mayer's Bagels offers traditional-flavored bagels like plain,

poppy, sesame, garlic, sourdough, and sun-dried tomato, as well as new flavors

already becoming customers' favorites: blueberry, cheddar cheese, Reeeses's

(with peanut butter and chocolate chips), the Little Italy (sun-dried tomato

dough with extra mozzarella, oregano and basil, topped with garlic), cracked

whole wheat and multi-grain.

Business has been steady since the opening, with the number of customers

walking through the doors increasing every week.

Variety in Bagels

Is The Spice of Life

So how does a former district manager at a corporate food service company

become owner of his own bagel shop? Easy - he takes his business life into his

own hands.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park, NY), Al has worked

for 25 years in the food service industry, first for restaurants and hotels,

then in corporate cafeterias such as Reader's Digest, Olin Corporation and Dun

& Bradstreet. After being laid off from his position last year, Al Mayer

became disgruntled at the instability of corporate life. Looking to take his

destiny into his own hands, Al decided it would be better to own a business,

forging his own way along the food chain path.

Late last year, Al and his wife Ellen, also a Culinary Institute graduate with

25 years' experience (even working in the same place as her husband at times),

began looking into a variety of businesses they might open. Food service trade

journals repeatedly pointed to bagels as the cutting edge for growth.

Further investigation showed that not only were bagels up and coming, they

could also turn quite a handsome profit. The clincher for the Mayers' decision

was that a bagel shop would afford the family to have their nights together -

Al and Ellen have one daughter, Tammy, 13 - something they cherish.

"I knew I could do just about anything, it was just a matter of figuring out

what I wanted to do and everything kept pointing back to bagels," MayerMan

said last week, busy feeding bagel dough into the machine which forms dough

into the familiar bagel shapes.

"Doing bagels gets me home at night with my family, in time for dinner, and

I'm an early-riser anyway, so I said `Bagels are it!'"

Ellen began working on a business plan last March, before the New Fairfield

couple even had a location picked out. Al was determined to find something

along a major commuter route, but also wanted plenty of room in a store

without being too big, a combination that proved difficult to find.

After discovering the then-vacant storefront in Plumtrees Plaza that used to

house The Dance Shop, Al thought at first the space offered might be too

small, until he spoke with a thriving bagel shop owner in New Jersey working

out of a space with the same square footage the Danbury storefront was

offering.

The bank approved Al and Ellen's business plan within two weeks, then sent it

to the Small Business Association, which approved it in three days. SCORE

helped guide Al in the process of starting up his own business, and after five

months of architectural drawing and construction, Mayer's Bagels opened its

doors to the public.

While the business will always be focused on bagels, additions to the menu's

offerings will be seen in coming months. Al has a lot of ideas already, and

his baker Al is bringing previous experience into the new shop as well.

Cannolis and biscotti may be added soon, and Al plans to begin offering a

Dessert of the Day in the future.

"Food chains cannot do the kind of variety we will be able to play with," Al

says. "They can do only what the chain allows them to do.

"I have no restrictions, but [other offerings] will never become the focus of

the business," he emphasized. "I won't let it."

Mayer's Bagels will always specialize in bagels and what goes well with them.

In this vein, the shop has a full line of plain, fat-free and flavored cream

cheeses.

Want something good? Try a cinnamon-raisin bagel with Vermont maple syrup and

walnuts cream cheese, or some Miami Hot cream cheese, which has smoked salmon,

scallions, horseradish and red peppers, on an Amigo (with jalapeno peppers and

salsa baked right in) bagel. These two combinations are already becoming

classics at the bagel shop.

For the breakfast and commuting customers, Mayer's Bagels offers regular and

decaf coffee and six fresh-brewed gourmet coffee flavors, along with milks,

sodas, juices and waters.

At lunch time, the shop can make bagel sandwiches with deli meats, chicken

salad, tuna salad, whitefish salad, and more.

Customer service, quality ingredients and professionalism are the cornerstones

of Mayer's Bagels. When creating the logo for the shop, Al decided to have

some fun with the fact he was opening a business during an election year, so

he has been having fun playing the role as "Mayor" Al Meyer.

With each purchase of a bagel, he says, it's a vote for MayerMan. In just four

weeks, a lot of votes have been cast already.

In Plumtrees Plaza on Newtown Road in Danbury, Mayer's Bagels is open Monday

through Friday, 6 am to 3 pm; Saturday, 7 am to 4 pm; and Sunday, 7 am to 2

pm. "Mayor" Al Mayer is usually on the premises, or very close by.