New Jersey-styled bagel shop expands in Manatee. It started in a Lakewood Ranch kitchen
Kim Fishman had never made a bagel before 2020.
What started as a hobby in her Lakewood Ranch kitchen with her three children during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic has morphed into a popular bagel shop off University Parkway.
Now Fishman is expanding. A second Jersey Girl Bagels location is planned for late spring or early summer 2025 at the Creekside Commons plaza in Parrish.
“We have a lot of Parrish customers here,” Fishman said. “I don’t think I realized how many until we said we were opening (in Parrish).”
Fishman, a Wayne, New Jersey native, opened Jersey Girl Bagels in February 2022. The store serves 17 flavors of bagels, with the process starting 24 hours in advance and all the spreads are made in-house. Fishman said the everything bagel is the most popular.
The menu also has a few breakfast sandwiches and beverages.
“That’s what bagel stores are,” Fishman said. “They’re not big restaurants where you’re going to come in and order corned beef on your bagel. ... Typically, they’re small takeout places with a limited menu that just have a really great bagel. And that’s what I was trying to create here.”
From a home kitchen to a thriving shop
Bagel shops are part of Northeast culture, specifically in New Jersey where Fishman is from. In 2020, while the world battled a deadly pandemic, Fishman’s family started a hobby of making homemade bagels while they stayed indoors.
A trial and error process followed to work the kinks out, and Fishman started passing them out to neighbors. Word of mouth followed, leading Fishman to set up a home-based delivery service.
“I have a customer that comes in now and she’s like, ‘Kim, I used to feel like I was waiting for concert tickets,’” Fishman said about the early popularity.
Demand continued surging, and a Benderson Development space opened up by 2022 for Fishman and her husband Erik to start Jersey Girl Bagels at 5275 University Parkway, #103.
The transition to a storefront business was helped along by Bob Iacullo of Empire Bakery Company. Iacullo is a retired bagel shop owner who now sells bakery equipment. Fishman’s foray into the business started with three dozen bagels in a batch from her home kitchen, but that blossomed to 480 bagels per batch after getting key equipment from Iacullo.
“I probably contacted him a year-and-a-half before I even opened the store, and he was just like, ‘I’m here if you have any questions,’” Fishman said. “And so what seemed impossible, (he said), ‘You can totally do that or this.’”
Fishman poured herself into researching and running questions past Iacullo. A customer of her home kitchen connected her with a Benderson salesperson who inquired on her behalf for a commercial space.
“So they called me and said, ‘We have a small space,’” Fishman said.
And now the bagels with a Jersey touch are expanding to North Manatee County. Fishman said all the bagels will be prepared the same way at the Parrish store, so there won’t be any transporting of goods between University Parkway and the new location when it opens in 2025.
“We will be able to give you a bagel that just came out of the oven,” Fishman said. “We are baking all morning.”
The Jersey Girl Bagels University Park location is open daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
