Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jaclyn Francese. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jaclyn , appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Naming anything can be so difficult. You want it to be unique, something that customers will remember and perhaps even have it tell a story in its own way.
At first we were trying to come up with all the bagel names we could think of… anything that had to do with dough or bagels. But then we went back to us wanting our name to have meaning and that is when Tim asked if I wanted to name our business after my dad.
My dad passed away in March of 2023 and we thought that there was no better way to have his legacy live on and that is where Vito Rose Bagels came from. The name of our business is very special to me, and I love that he is a part of it even though he is not able to be here.

Jaclyn , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Vito Rose Bagels started as a happy accident. Jaclyn’s mom was visiting from New York and wanted a bagel. Knowing that most of the bagels in our area are not really what she was looking for, Tim decided he was going to try making her a bagel. Of course, the first bagel was not the winner, but he is persistent and does not give up. He tried again and again until we realized he had made a really good bagel.
Tim does have a culinary background and knows a thing or two about cooking, but baking was never really his thing… until now. Being the perfectionist that he is he kept making bagels and soon we had so many that we decided to sell them during our neighborhood garage sale. After this, people wanted more and that his how Vito Rose Bagels was born.
If it was not for Tim’s persistence and our passion to grow our business to what it has become, we would not be where we are today. We are constantly marketing ourselves, creating new flavors of bagels and cream cheese and dream bigger than we ever thought possible.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

For us, our story has just begun and we are in the thick of growing our business. We are currently working on opening our first store front and it has been an extremely challenging yet exciting chapter that I am sure we will look back on and smile one day. For now, we are running our delivery only business in both retail and wholesale while raising 2 children and doing everything we can to get our store opened. We are pouring our hearts and life savings into this project as we jump over hurdles and find the best avenues for us to complete our dream. We have had to make sacrifices and pivot a few times to make it a reality.
Together we have adapted to changes and learned so much along the way. Not only is our business stronger but so is our relationship and that is something we can carry with us always… we learned and we grew together.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media has been our best marketing tool since starting Vito Rose Bagels. We used Facebook when we first told our community that we were serving fresh bagels and cream cheese at the neighborhood garage sale, and we still utilize this platform today. We also have a presence on Instagram and TikTok. We got creative with our posts, learned how to take great photos and stayed consistent with posting. We have grown from zero followers to 1.4k followers in 15 months.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vitorosebagels.com
• Instagram: @vitorosebagels
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552963288622