Bean's Bagels' Marisa Figueroa is bringing Bloom Bistro to Georgetown
'We'll have a little bit of everything, but the bagels will be the star of the show'
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When Marisa Figueroa arrived in Seattle, she had a realization that so many other local bagelmakers cite as their impetus to start making their own.
“I was totally convinced that no one in Seattle had ever even had a bagel before or knew what it was,” Figueroa told It’s a Shanda. “It was a void that I needed to [fill].
“My best friend, who lived on the Lower East Side in New York City, would ship me out bagels, next-day shipping. But I was like, ‘This is kind of a lot.’ So my wife and I, every Sunday, we would look up recipes and kind of tweak them, and we started making bagels together just as a hobby and a way for us to do something nice together on our day off. And we were really bad at it. You have to make bad bagels before you can make good ones. And we just kept working and tweaking and learning and reading books on baking.”
All of that tweaking, baking, testing, and learning allowed Marisa and her wife Miranda to start sharing bagels with friends and family, many of whom wanted to know how to get their hands on even more of them. While they were already running Electric Habitat, which makes small-batch pickles and hot sauces, they eventually decided to do some bagel pop-ups.
Bean’s Bagels was born.
“We did our first bagel pop-up in 2021,” said Figueroa. “And from there on, it just kind of spiraled into us still having a lot of fun.”
The flexibility and pop-up lifestyle really appealed to them, but when the perfect brick-and-mortar location became available in Georgetown, it was too good to pass up.
And so, the idea for Bloom Bistro & Grocery was born. That idea goes well beyond just bagels.
“When the space that we are opening Bloom Bistro in opened up, it just called to me,” she said. “I knew that this was where I would want to open a brick-and-mortar if I were to do it. So I contacted the building owners, and I was like, this is my idea of what I want to do. I want to open a bagel shop. I want to have a little grocery section and a community hub. The building owners, they loved it, and they were on board, so it kind of just fell in my lap. I manifested it in a lot of ways, but it all really came together very smoothly for me.”
Now, Marisa and Miranda are running a Kickstarter campaign to get Bloom Bistro & Grocery off the ground. The fundraiser is looking to raise $15,0000 “to buy the last pieces of equipment we need and to make this space our own.”
Donors get access to several potential gifts, including merch, an invitation to the store’s soft opening, a monthly bagel allotment, and the opportunity to create their own bagel flavor.
While there are plenty of bagel deserts around Seattle that could use a place like Bloom Bistro, setting up shop in Georgetown felt essential.
“I am South Seattle through and through,” said Figueroa. “Even before I moved out here, I visited a lot, and I always stayed in Georgetown. I really felt welcomed in that community. I've been in this little South Seattle bubble, so that was one of my goals. If I did open a brick-and-mortar store, I wanted it to be in South Seattle because I feel like that's kind of just where my community lies.”
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