SBA Seattle District Office Rural Small Business of the Year: Good Bagels Café

Nick and I don't have a wealth of business experience, so opening a business was immediately a little bit intimidating and there was a lot of questions that we had. And so having someone that could answer those questions was amazing. I'm a certified business advisor with the Washington sbdc. The SBDC provides free one on one confidential business advisory services to small businesses throughout the state of Washington. So Nick and Alex came to me in 2021 with the idea for a bagel cafe. They were currently at the time baking out of a commercial kitchen and they really wanted to open their own space. One of the issues that they were running into was the lack of funding, knowing how much funding they would need and how to obtain that funding. So the assistance that I provided included helping them write their business plan, helping them understand their financial and produce financial projections so that they would have the best chance at a lending opportunity. I would say the thing that kept us from going straight to a brick and mortar was mostly just the confidence in the idea. Christina has been someone that's always been in our corner and been extremely supportive of the concept of Good bagels. And so she's been a great resource and just someone to talk to, someone to bounce ideas off of and always pushing us in the right direction. We started Good Bagels because we love bagels and there isn't a bagel shop in Anacortes. And this was our way of bringing something we love to a new place. What sets us apart is our quality of our products that we use. You know, our bagels are fresh hand rolled every day using local fresh milled flour grown here in Skagit Valley. Our coffee is small batch roasted on South Whidbey island and you can taste the difference in our product. The part that I enjoy the most about owning my own business is like the connection with the community. I think I really enjoy to see the impact that we're having on people's day to day lives. We love giving back to our community. Anytime someone comes in, we're more than happy to donate whatever it is that we can. We also donate all of our unsold bagels to Free Food Anacortes, which is an organization that puts together food boxes for people in need. Which means that we don't throw any bagels away. The reason that I nominated Nick and Alex was really because they had this tenacious mindset of meeting their goal. Nick and Alex went from just two guys baking in a commercial kitchen, selling a thousand bagels a week, to opening their own brick and mortar with seven to 14 employees. It's an amazing accomplishment and growth. Winning Rural Small Business of the Year is just a really cool recognition of all the hard work that you put in. I wish I could say it's relieving, but I know that there's so much more work ahead. But it gives a lot of confidence to know that we're heading in the right direction and the network is going to pay out.