Barry’s Bagels is set to introduce itself to campus in the coming weeks. Credit: Jack Like | Lantern Reporter
Buckeyes staying on campus over the summer will soon have a new bagel place to enjoy.?
Barry Bagels, which will be located at 1881 N. Pearl St., is currently slated to open sometime in May, according to Amy Sigman, co-owner of the Barry’s Columbus franchise.
“We would have hoped to have been open by now,” Sigman said. “We ran into a few snags, so we’re hoping to open sometime in mid-to-late May.”
James Nusbaum, CEO of Barry’s, said the new Ohio State location is part of a recent effort the company has made to exponentially grow in the coming years.
“We are about to open our 23rd location,” Nusbaum said. “We have another 86 locations signed to development deals, so a total of 109 locations [are] either open or under development … We have stores open in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky [and] Indiana, and we have development agreements in South Carolina, Texas and Iowa.”
Barry Bagels is a Toledo-based franchise that has existed for more than 50 years, Nusbaum said. In the past decade, he said the company has evolved from a family business into a growing bagel franchise.
“We started in Toledo in 1972, and we were five family-owned restaurants up until 2015,” Nusbaum said. “We’ve been growing through franchising recently, and that’s the path going forward.”
Sigman said growing up near the original Barry’s location and her familial ties to Ohio State helped motivate her to introduce the restaurant to campus.
“I grew up going to Barry’s Bagels my whole life,” Sigman said. “My husband and I live in Grove City and we have two kids. One graduated from Ohio State, and my son is a junior there on the baseball team. It just worked out that we found a spot on campus that we liked and thought it would do well.”
Nusbaum said the Ohio State location will accommodate the schedules of college students — meaning that once school starts again in the fall, the location will stay open late on weekends.
“On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, we’re actually going to stay open very late,” Nusbaum said. “We will have a takeout window that will be open for those folks who are studying late or doing something else.”
Nusbaum said all of the bagels are made fresh and in-house and they have a wide variety of options.
“We bake our bagels in small batches all day long,” Nusbaum said. “We don’t just bake them early in the day and let them be in the bins all day long. We serve a really good variety of both savory and sweet bagels: plain, everything, salt, garlic, raisin, blueberry and we serve a vanilla cinnamon bagel that’s really popular.”
Beyond bagels, Nusbaum said Barry’s serves other meals of different varieties.
“We also do a really significant sandwich, soups and salads business,” Nusbaum said. “We serve pastrami, corned beef, locks, matzo ball soup and all turkey, including honey roasted turkey.”
In addition to their food and bagels, Nusbaum said the community-forward environment will be something that draws customers into the store.
“We try to make a very easy user experience while providing very high quality food at a reasonable price,” Nusbaum said. “We think we have a great culture and a great vibe, it’s a very welcoming concept that people feel very comfortable with.”
This story was updated April 15 at 10:30 a.m. to update “Barry’s” to “Barry.”
