The trials and tribulations of Toasted.
The U District bagel cafe's opening has been delayed by a seemingly endless array of very Seattle problems.
Toasted. Bagels & Coffee was supposed to open in Summer 2023.
Since then, the Mediterranean-inspired bagel cafe has remained in a perpetual state of “coming soon” at the corner of 15th Avenue NE and NE 50th Street in Seattle’s University District.
In the 1.5 years since owners Jaafar Altameemi and Murat Akyüz launched their plans, passersby and social media followers have wondered what’s taking so long and if the doors to Toasted. would ever actually open.
The journey has apparently been wilder and more frustrating than you’d believe.
“We’ve been trying to open up this cafe for the last year and a half,” said Akyüz in a recent Instagram video. “And we did not realize it would take this long.”
The Toasted. The team posted that video late last week after several weeks of stops and starts and mounting frustration over an ongoing situation with their landlord, which they say is preventing them from finally opening the store.
I sat down with Altameemi a few weeks back for what was supposed to be an interview to discuss Toasted.’s imminent opening. Instead, it ended up being a conversation about his concerns that the cafe may never open at that location despite all the work and money they’ve put into it.
Born in Iraq and raised in Egypt, Altameemi’s family immigrated to Pennsylvania when he was young. The culture shock was intense (“120 million people in Egypt to Lansdale, Pennsylvania, with buggies”). They eventually moved to Edmonds, WA and he aspired to follow in the family business and become a dentist. A lack of passion for dentistry ended that and the then-17-year-old started his own business, a Lynnwood bubble waffle shop called Cafe Kleo.
“Pretty standard for a Middle Eastern kid to be entrepreneurial,” he says.
That entrepreneurial spirit took him to the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business where he met Akyüz.
“Very similar story,” he says of Akyüz. “Turkish immigrant. Moved to San Francisco. Him and his family started a Mediterranean restaurant and then scaled it up to two and now working on another one. Very similar experience as me, and he is just as entrepreneurial as he can be.”
During a graduation trip to New York City in 2018, the building Altameemi was staying in had a bagel shop on the ground floor.
“I went in and I bought a bagel,” he said. “I called my mom. I was like, ‘One day, I'm gonna open a bagel shop.’”
The seeds of Toasted. were born. Partnered with Akyüz, Altameemi says he went into the concept with the goal of using technology to solve the three major problems that come with owning a food business (food waste, employee retention, and scalability).
During the pandemic, Altameemi was scouting locations and came across the storefront at 4756 15th Ave NE. They negotiated a “very long-term lease” with the nonprofit landlord Bellwether Housing and started making Toasted. a reality.
That’s when the universe began to conspire against them, or so it seemed.
While recovering from a car accident, Altameemi and his team began the permitting process with the city of Seattle and King County. That’s when, according to him, the county required Toasted. to spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on plumbing to get up to code only to be told after the fact that they hadn’t needed to do all of that.
The issue apparently stemmed from a misunderstanding over their occupancy numbers, which should have been low enough for Toasted. to avoid what Akyüz referred to as “nine months of plan reviewing and permitting.” He puts the price tag at “six figures.”
“I understand it's the code, and you have to play along with it, and we did that,” said Altameemi. “But what you shouldn't be able to play along with is, after you spend nine months and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they tell you, actually, you didn't need to spend all that in the last nine months. And that part really infuriated me.”
While dealing with that, he says the storefront was broken into for the first time. The break-in caused damage to the floor-to-ceiling windows and building exterior. They say their insurance carrier refused to cover any costs.
The city of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development offers $2,000 Storefront Repair Fund grants to “help cover costs to repair current property damage or reimburse business owners for costs paid out of pocket for past damage.” However, Altameemi says they were rejected because they failed to meet the timeline requirements. Per the website, a business “must be in operation prior to June 1, 2022” to qualify.
Even if they had been able to get the grant, Altameemi says it wouldn’t have come close to covering the repair costs anyway.
And that’s when they got broken into a second time.
“All of the general contractors’ tools stolen,” he said. “I had a lift in there that goes 25 feet because we have high ceilings. They had cut wires and cables on it. They had stolen whatever equipment I had in there, including our register and all sorts of stuff. In total, that was about $90,000.”
“At this point, I was pretty set on we're not gonna be able to open,” he said.
Following a discussion with his investors, he decided to push forward and keep trying to make Toasted. happen. After replacing everything that was stolen and finding a new contractor, they had to resubmit their plans to the city. Eventually, they got the ball rolling on their way to an eventual opening.
That’s when they were broken into for a third time.
This time, Altameemi happened to be there during the break-in attempt. After the perpetrator threw a rock through the window, Altameemi, who happened to be inside, chased him down, caught him, and called the cops.
In their video, Altameemi and Akyüz put the total glass damage bill from all three break-ins at “around $10,000.”
Myriad code issues and inspection drama followed and the costs continued to skyrocket. Eventually, however, they found their way through and were finally ready to open Toasted. to the public in April.
“Passed through everything. We had a date. I had hired six full-time employees. Four part-time employees. Menu's all done,” Altameemi said. “We're practicing. Equipment's all in. We set up all the equipment and we turn it on. And then the electric blows the entire panel.”
He says that the panel was receiving 100 amps of power, which was less than they needed and less than what was noted they would receive in their contract (200 amps) with Bellwether. After his electrician told him it would be $25,000 to make the required changes, Altameemi says he contacted Bellwether and they “ghosted for six weeks.”
After getting an attorney involved, Altameemi says that Bellwether finally responded and began doing the required work to ensure Toasted. would have access to 200 amps.
At this point, Altameemi says money was running tight and he was expecting Bellwether to compensate him with a tenant improvement allowance, an agreed-upon amount of money that a landlord gives to a tenant to compensate for improvements associated with moving into and renovating a new space.
Altameemi said that the contract between Toasted. and Bellwether includes a reference to a tenant improvement allowance with an agreed-upon number.
At the time of our interview in late May, Altameemi had not received that money and said he would not be able to open Toasted. unless he did.
“To this day, they still haven't paid me that,” he said. “And during that time, I was paying all these employees during their delay. And when they were in default of the contract, paying all these employees, have all these bills that are coming up. I mean, we're down to the wire here. This is every last cent that I have, and, you know, I'm not paying back my loans. Investors are all questioning what's happening.”
“What’s stopping us from opening today is our landlord,” Altameemi says in the video they posted on Friday, adding that they had to lay off their entire staff due to the delays. “We did all the work. We completed the buildout. But we still haven’t received our T.I. payment. And every week, Bellwether Housing tells us ‘Next week.’ And we cannot open for business unless they pay us out.”
“This video is our last attempt at trying to get Bellwether Housing to cooperate with us,” added Akyüz while various images of poor online reviews for Bellwether populate the screen.
“As soon as Bellwether actually decides to start working with their tenant, then we’ll literally just be two weeks away from opening and we cannot wait to have you in our space,” added Altameemi.
Bellwether did not respond to a request for comment about Altameemi’s and Akyüz’s claims.
I’ll continue to monitor the situation to see if and when Toasted. finally opens its doors. When they do, they plan on serving a Mediterranean-themed menu based around bagels sourced from Backyard Bagels (though they do plan to make their own bagels eventually).
For what it’s worth, they told me that “a couple of government officials” have reached out following Friday’s video.
“I have so many people involved in this project now that there are so many mouths and people talking in my ear. So I’m trying to filter through everything that is being said and really prioritize what's going to get us started,” Altameemi said.
Whatever it takes to finally get those doors open for business.
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Bellwether has given new meaning to the word non-profit. Wow.
Completely contemptible behavior from the city of Seattle. This isn’t the first case I’ve heard of the city giving wrong or late information and screwing over businesses which ultimately drives up price and drives down choice for customers. If Seattle cannot properly administer its rules, it should not have them.