Boichik Hopes to Build the Bay Area’s Premier Bagel Destination in West Berkeley

Breakout Bay Area bagel star Emily Winston is expanding her popular business Boichik Bagels with a second retail outpost and bagel factory in West Berkeley. Located in an industrial building at 1225 Sixth Street, the 18,000-square-foot space will serve as “the new foundation” for the business, allowing for expansion of all kinds — more products, future stores, and a longer roster of wholesale partners. “We’ve been fortunate to be a huge success from day one when we opened our doors two years ago,” Winston says. “And we need more room. We’re bursting at the seams.”

Construction of the new bagel plant and store will take about a year, but as soon as she’s able, Winson says she’ll open up the retail store. It’ll be a place for folks to purchase bagels, bagel sandwiches, and coffee. But she also envisions it as a place for customers to get a peek behind the scenes at how those impossibly chewy, slightly sweet, New York–style bagels get made. “That's a big thing I like, transparency,” she says. “You’re going to see what we’re doing. We’re not hiding anything. We’re legit and it's also really cool equipment.”

Winston says the design will include a window into the production kitchen, specifically so bagel fans can get a good view of the new dough machine — sort of like how Krispy Kreme locations let patrons drool over the machine that perfectly fries and glazes its airy doughnuts. The concept is partially inspired by Tartine Manufactory; it’s meant to be a place where visitors can see how the bagels are made, order one to enjoy on site, and take it outside to the large patio to try.

The new space also means Winston can expand the Boichik product line, which used to include some Jewish pastries before she maxed out bagel production at the currently 1,200-square-foot bakery. The first item she’ll bring back is the black-and-white cookies, followed by rugelach, challah, a triple chocolate chip coffee cake that Winston describes as her homage to Entenmann’s chocolate chip loaf — gussied up with Ghirardelli chocolate chips. Winston says Boichik will also be opening additional retail stores throughout the Bay Area (“We’ll be crossing bridges in the future,” she says, which is welcome news for San Francisco Boichik fans) though “nothing is signed yet.”

Winston, who started baking bagels seven hours and nine dozen at a time in her home kitchen, financed the expansion without taking on any outside investors and by selling her house in Alameda. “There’s been no shortage of people knocking on the door,” she says. “But they want equity and I’m still like, I do not want to sell equity yet. I don’t want to compromise anything.” The self-taught bagel master launched Boichik out of her home with a cottage food license in 2017 after which it was “off to the races,” she says. She opened her first brick-and-mortar location in 2019 and has consistently had her bagels called out as some of the best in the Bay Area and state. Winston says fans beg her to bring them to all corners of the country. “There’s demand for better bagels in the world and we plan on growing to meet that demand,” she says.