Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 21, 1994 TAG: 9406290014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They wouldn't make the same mistake again.
Anytime they traveled between their native New York and their new home in Botetourt County in the years since then, they always toted a bag - or several bags - of fresh New York bagels. They preferred theirs from a little shop on Staten Island.
Bagel loyalists are like that.
Bagels are one of the few foods people carry great distances just to have a ready supply, even if it means lugging them on airplane flights or enduring long road trips confined with the sweet stink of onion and garlic.For the Sterns, when they returned home with their bagels, they froze them to keep the supply from getting stale. Then they would thaw a couple for breakfast whenever they needed a fix.
Still, it was frustrating.
The Sterns' supply never lasted them until the next visit to New York, and to their dismay, the bagel trend had not made headway yet in Roanoke, where biscuits have long been the morning Goliath.
As for the grocery store variety, well, forget about it.
Friends shared their frustration, especially the friends who had lived where bagel shops already have taken hold, like Washington or Richmond or Charlotte. So many times, Hal and Joanne Stern heard the same chorus:
``I wish a good bagel shop would open here.''
They often toyed with the idea of opening one themselves, but never seriously.
They had moved to Virginia for other reasons.
"We'd had it with New York," explained Hal Stern, 48.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Stern had lived in New York all his life, except when he served in Vietnam. He went to college at City University of New York and worked as a buyer in the city for 10 years before going into business for himself in 1980.
An avid runner, he bought out a friend's two shoe stores, one in Manhattan and one on Long Island. The stores specialized in running shoes.
He met Joanne, also an avid runner, a year later when a mutual running friend introduced them at his store. She also was born in Brooklyn and also had lived in New York all her life. She worked as an executive secretary.
They married in 1982. Eventually, they closed the lower-volume Long Island store and she joined him in running the Manhattan store.
Business was good. They bought a nice house on Long Island.
They traveled. On one trip to the Smokey Mountains, they stayed overnight in Roanoke, and they remember talking about how beautiful the mountains were here.
Since boyhood, Hal Stern always had wanted to live in the mountains.
He never loved New York, the crime, the traffic, the hassle. "Do you know how terrifying it is just to go to the Motor Vehicle Bureau in New York?" he said. "You have to wait three hours, maybe four, then they'll tell you you're in the wrong line."
Stern's plan for them was to sell the store when its lease agreement was up, and move. He set his sights on Virginia because it was within a day's drive of family in New York, and it was warmer than Pennsylvania.
After visiting Roanoke again, along with Bedford and Lynchburg, they settled on Roanoke. "A small town type of a place, but not too small. That's what Roanoke is. It's not Mayberry," she said.
Opening a bagel business was never part of the design.
They both wanted to teach, and the cost-of-living disparity worked in their favor. In 1988, they sold their house on Long Island for more than $300,000. In Botetourt, they were able to buy a bigger house for $125,000.
With the sale of their Manhattan store, they both were able to return to college as full-time students. She went to Hollins to study sociology and education. He went to Virginia Tech to work toward a doctorate in educational psychology.
After Hollins, Joanne got a job teaching the seventh grade at Breckinridge Middle School. But Hal quit school early and returned to work, after the people who bought their store in New York went bankrupt and reneged on the rest of the money owed them. He got a job with Dominion Bank.
Still, bagels were not in the plan.
It wasn't until last fall that they took a serious look at opening their own shop, influenced by a combination of timing, opportunity and other factors they couldn't have predicted.
Foremost was that Roanoke still didn't have a fresh bagel shop. This bucked a national trend, where bagel consumption has been steadily rising. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the average American now eats a pound more bagels annually than five years ago.
At their jobs, both were discontent. She didn't like teaching after all. He didn't like the new corporate climate under First Union.
Then, after a 3-year legal battle, they received a settlement on the sale of their shoe store.
With that money in hand, they went looking for additional financing. They told the bank they would need to earn $500 a day to break even. That translates to selling roughly 1,000 bagels a day, plus accompaniments, but they were confident.
They looked at a New York City telephone book under bagel equipment suppliers, and started getting set up. The supplier arranged for them to spend several apprenticeship days at two bagel shops in New Jersey.
They bought $50,000 worth of equipment, including a used $15,000 oven, a $15,000 bagel divider/former, a $10,000 mixer, a $6,000 walk-in refrigerator and a $4,000 bagel kettle.
They found a location at Southwest Plaza on Electric Road and spent $38,000 on renovations.
Joanne, 47, came up with the name: Five-Boro Bagels, referring to the five boroughs of New York City.
Then they started baking. "This is not a science," she explained. "It takes a lot of practice, and trial and error."
For several weeks before they opened, they gave away practice bagels by the bag to friends and to anyone else who wandered by the shop.
It worked as great word-of-mouth advertising. For example, before they opened, Joanne's sister in Boston called a florist here to order some flowers for the shop's opening. The florist said: "Oh, I've had their bagels."
They could tell from people's interest that they would do well, but they weren't prepared for just how well.
They opened June 4, and within the first week they already were averaging 1,000 bagels a day. Several days, they nearly have topped 2,000.
Originally, Hal planned to keep his First Union job, at least until the bagel business seemed well-established. He left the bank last week.
Why the response?
Part of the success is in the kettle, where the bagels are boiled briefly before they are baked. This process is what makes bagels authentic and gives them their shine and shape.
And part of it goes back to bagel loyality. Hal Stern tried to explain. "It's an emotional thing," he said, and then paused. "Growing up..." He paused again. "In New York..." Pause. "They just taste good...I don't know."
Added Joanne: "People. They're thanking us for being here."
by CNB