Jersey Girl Bagels Brings Authentic NJ Experience To Bradenton

BRADENTON, FL — Bagels are a way of life in New Jersey.

“It’s such a part of your culture when you grow up in New York and New Jersey,” Kim Fishman told Patch. “It’s part of your childhood. Bagels. Pizza. Pork rolls.”

When she and her husband moved their family to Lakewood Ranch more than five years ago, she was disappointed — but not surprised — that they couldn’t find an authentic NJ or NY bagel.

“We were told you can’t make bagels in Florida because of the water, the humidity,” she said. “There are a lot of little challenges.”

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fishman was determined to figure it out — and she did.

Two years later, she’s turned her pandemic hobby into a business, opening Jersey Girl Bagels at 5275 University Parkway in February.

It was important to her that she get the process for creating an authentic bagel right.

“There’s nostalgia about bagels that people who aren’t from N.Y. or N.J. don’t understand,” Fishman said. “Growing up, it was weekend food. That was my vision. It’s Saturday morning and you’re getting a dozen bagels for your family or you’re having a warm egg and cheese (bagel) sandwich.”

So, she and her children started making them from scratch in their kitchen.

“There are a million different recipes and different filters for water, and water temperature is a huge thing,” she said.

When Fishman finally got the recipe right, she started making them for her friends. And with many places closed because of coronavirus in 2020, word spread about her bagels, and she began taking orders for neighbors and friends of friends.

“It grew into this small, little business from home. It continued to grow and grow, and it outgrew my kitchen and my capacity,” she said. “I needed more oven space and storage. I either needed to continue doing this in a bigger way or stop doing this.”

She had three refrigerators at her home just for bagels and it wasn’t long before she was using a neighbor’s extra fridge in their garage, as well.

Fishman considered various possibilities for growing Jersey Girl Bagels, including opening a food truck or ghost kitchen. Ultimately, she to take the leap and open a small bagel shop, signing the lease on her new space in March 2021.

As much as COVID-19 inspired her business, it’s also created challenges as she prepared to open a brick-and-mortar location, she said. “COVID is the reason for the business and also all the hardships that come along with opening the business. It’s been a double-edged sword.”

Though she ordered all the equipment she needed last May, not all of it was available immediately. Fishman’s still waiting on some small parts that won’t be available until April.

The buildout of her shop was delayed, as well, as the contractors faced various “COVID hiccups,” she said.

And that she was baking bagels on such a mass scale — making thousands a day — she needed to tweak her process.

Instead of small hand-crafted batches, she suddenly found herself working with a mixer that can handle 85 pounds of flour at a time and creating 130 pounds of dough a day.

“Going from small batch to mass production is definitely an adjustment. The recipe needed to be adjusted a little bit. The timing needs to be adjusted a little bit,” Fishman said.

Quality control is more of an issue now, as well. Rather than hand-rolling the bagels, she has a machine to do it for her.

“I have a love-hate relationship with the machine,” she said. “It allows me to make that many bagels at once, but they don’t all look the same. They have a different look and I need to sort through them. At home, in small batches, I touch every single bagel. I know what each one looks like.”

Customers are always fascinated by her bagel-making process.

“Probably because it’s so difficult to make them in Florida,” she said.

While she doesn’t import water from New York, she’s installed a filtration system that softens the bagel shop’s water so that it’s similar to what she might use up north.

The water temperature she uses is key, as well, and needs to be a little cooler than what would normally come out of the faucet in Florida, she said. “Dough is picky. You need to have a certain temperature of water, a certain temperature of dough, and the humidity doesn’t help things – and we have a lot of humidity.”

Once the dough is prepared, she boils and bakes the bagels.

“Those are the two questions we get — the water and the other is do you boil them,” Fishman said.

Since opening Feb. 17, Jersey Girl Bagels has been busy, often selling out of bagels. On average, she sells about 2,000 daily.

With no seating for customers, “it’s truly an old-fashioned bagel shop,” she said. “You go to a bagel store, you come in, you pick out what you want, and you go. At this point, I’m keeping it simple.”

So far, it’s in keeping with her personal vision for the shop, something that speaks to her childhood in New Jersey.

“It’s something that, personally, I always missed coming down here and being down here, and I didn’t realize how much everybody had the same, mutual feeling,” Fishman said. “Just the little corner bagel shop. Nothing fancy, just that it’s good. Where you can come in, get a warm bagel with your favorite cream cheese, and go eat it at home or in your car or wherever.”