Sidework

Noah Bernamoff is the co-owner of Black Seed Bagels, the artisan bagel brand that has largely defined New York’s bagel culture for the past decade. Along with co-founder Matt Kliegman and Culinary Director Dianna Daoheung, Noah is working to take Black Seed to its next stage of growth.‍

‍What’s been the hardest part of growing Black Seed to where it is today?

Balancing the desire to grow with the business’s operational needs. When you’re small, you can muscle/hustle through a lot of growing pains, but as the business footprint, volume, and reach grows, you need to unlock operational efficiencies so that growth becomes sustainable and self-perpetuating.

‍Since opening in 2014, you've added about one store per year to the business. What has enabled that kind of growth?‍

Early on, brand success and notoriety propelled the growth, but as we grew past the first few stores, we struggled to stabilize new stores, particularly with staffing. Every opening would suck the top talent out of the company network and into itself. While we were a lean management team with low management overhead, store openings were negatively impacting existing store performance and, frankly, getting harder and harder to pull off. It became obvious that we needed to build our team beyond culinary and operations and surround the company with more management-level talent in areas like HR and training, hospitality and guest experience, food production, and finance. It’s that behind-the-scenes growth that has enabled us to open 10 stores in 10 years.

‍How has Black Seed impacted bagel culture in New York?‍

Black Seed was the first bagel shop in NYC(and arguably the world) to elevate traditional bagel baking culture to a gastronomically recognized level, best exemplified by my co-founder Dianna becoming the first and only bagel baker ever nominated for a James Beard award.There were already great places to find delicious bagels in 2013, but what wesaw happening with pizza and bread inspired us to want the same for bagels: a marriage of past traditions with modern sensibilities of the present, while harnessing the power of social media and restaurants as pop-cultural cachet. A decade later, bagel culture is thriving globally, and I like to think we helped pioneer this new, more innovative and idiosyncratic approach to the genre.‍

Has Black Seed always operated on the hub-and-spoke business model? What are the benefits of running things this way.

‍Yes, when we first opened in 2014, our original Nolita bakery was designed to produce 100% of the food that was served at our next location, a small counter in Brookfield Place. Baking and prepping centrally helps us maintain consistency and keeps our ovens running at maximum efficiency. There are plenty of challenges with the model, especially in NewYork where local logistics can be frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive, but over time we’ve developed a more fine-tuned approach. One of the main benefits of the model is our ability to open stores with smaller footprints in high-traffic, densely populated areas.‍

What’s your bagel combo?‍

At my core, I’m an old Jewish man, and I think my order will remain unchanged forever: a sesame bagel, untoasted, with scallion cream cheese and smoked salmon. If only plain cream cheese is available, then I add red onion.

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