Bean's Bagels' Marisa Figueroa is bringing Bloom Bistro to Georgetown
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.”
“I had briefly worked with a commercial real estate agent last year, thinking about opening up a brick-and-mortar, and they were very helpful, but were showing me a lot of places in Ballard and Capitol Hill and Pioneer Square. Those places are great. And I'm sure if I opened up there, I would be successful, but I didn't have that connection to it. So being in Georgetown just feels so good to me.”
Beyond the value of bringing bagels to Georgetown, it’s also an opportunity to bring a much-needed general store to the community as well, literally doing so in the building that used to be home to the Carleton Ave Grocery.
“Georgetown is a food desert,” she said. “It has gas stations and it has Maruta, a Japanese grocery store, but you have to travel well outside of the neighborhood to get food staples. That was kind of one of my other visions for this space, a little pantry area where we sold freshly baked breads, our pickles, our hot sauces, and household items so people could grab their food and flour or whatever else they needed. Very similar to a New York-style bodega.
“A corner store where you can get some groceries to make dinner. Get a sandwich that is nice but not going to break the bank and a cup of coffee, see your neighbors there, and then carry on with your day. So Georgetown has been super excited for our little grocery.”
Fear not, bagel fans, the onus will still be those bread circles and schmears. Figueroa expects the shop to be split 50/50 between bagels and the grocery.
“We'll have bagel sandwiches. You can pick up a dozen. It will be similar to a traditional bagel shop,” said Figueroa. “I will be sourcing pastries from other amazing local pastry chefs from all over the city. So we'll have a little bit of everything, but the bagels will be the star of the show.”
Growing up outside Boston, Figueroa says that bagels were “just kind of part of the culture.” Since her dad was from New York City, they would travel between the two cities, and bagels became a staple of her breakfasts. Like so many of us East Coasters, she took it for granted that good bagels grew on trees.
“It's kind of one of those things that you don't realize is so dependent on location when you're younger,” she said.
As for what her go-to bagel order would be…
“I have always loved a great sesame seed bagel. It's got to have the salt and I love just a classic chive onion smear on it. I always loved garden veggie schmeer on it. Like a sesame with garden veg smear is exactly what I want a lot of the time.”
The Seattle bagel scene has come quite a long way in a short amount of time. The days of having to settle for mediocrity are behind us as the city is full of post-pandemic bagel success stories and artisan pop-ups, like Bean’s Bagels.
So how does Figueroa see that sea change evolving the scene as well as her own business?
“I do love that people are excited about making bagels,” said Figueroa. “I'm not trying to talk shit about the other bagel businesses, but I do think that some places could do some recipe development and a little tweaking. I think it's got a long way to go. Even though there are a lot of places now, you still talk to a lot of people from the East Coast, and they are still not super excited about the options. So I'm really looking forward to a lot of these up-and-coming businesses. I think a lot of the pop-ups and bagel businesses have the opportunity to really do it right.
“It's hard when you're trying to do a high volume. It's hard when you have to rely on a lot of employees. I do a lot of high-volume orders. I do pop-ups, but it's still just me. I have some employees who will help occasionally. I have employees that I bring over from my other business to help me with certain things, and I have my wife who helps me. But really being able to pay attention to detail is, I think, something that really benefits a lot of these smaller businesses that do pop-ups or home delivery.
“I'm excited about where it's going because I think some of these smaller businesses are helping the quality increase. These bagel businesses that have been around for a while are, I think, reevaluating now.
“I'm excited about where we're heading.”
You can follow Bean’s Bagel and Bloom Bistro on Instagram and check out their Kickstarter campaign.
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