We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Talia & Kelly Bongolan-Schwartz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Talia & Kelly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
The biggest risk we’ve taken as individuals and as a business was leaving our jobs and going full-time into the bagel world. When we first conceptualized Tali’s Bagels & Schmear, Kelly was doing environmental work and Talia was taking a break from her PhD and waitressing full-time. In its infancy, Tali’s Bagels & Schmear was your quintessential pandemic-era online business. Kelly was working from home and Talia worked nights. During the day they made bagels at home and sold them on Instagram. After three months we decided to take our shot at a larger audience and apply to Oahu’s largest farmers market. To produce at that scale and to be compliant with the Dept. of Health, we needed to move into a commercial kitchen space so we took out our first loan to cover our start-up costs. The response was instant. We soon added another weekly market and increased production. After five months of working full-time and building Tali’s Bagels, Kelly took the leap and quit her day job. Two months later, Taila served her last table and they were both all in at Tali’s Bagels. Today, a little over a year after selling our first bagels on Instagram, we now do 6 markets a week, a team with us at each event, and a company van.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
We are Tali’s Bagels & Schmear, based in Honolulu, HI. We sell NY-style bagels as well as traditional and locally-inspired schmears, all made from scratch. We specialize in mini bagels, which was our first product and still our most popular to date. Most customers come for Tali’s Original Bagel Flight, which comes with 3 mini bagels and 3 schmears of your choice. We keep our bagels old-school, selling classic, everything, sesame, and poppyseed, and we boast over 10 different schmears at any given market ranging from ube cream cheese to lomi lox and smoked local whitefish salad, with all of our fish being cured and smoked in-house. All of our bagels are vegan-friendly and so are a third of our schmears. We source most of our produce locally, working with farmers and fishermen. What makes us stand out is our authentic process and commitment to tradition. Talia is Jewish and grew up on Long Island, where bagels were part of her daily routine. Customers come back because we provide comfort, nostalgia, and a superior taste in the product. We are most proud to be carrying on cultural and family traditions. Talia’s grandparents were kosher caterers on Long Island and a kosher butcher in Jamaica, Queens. Kelly’s grandfather was part of the sakadas, the first generation of Filipinos to immigrate to Hawaii to work in the plantation fields. Tali’s Bagels & Schmear is our modern take on a classic staple and our way to continue to feed the locals of O’ahu.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
Like any good business, we met on a dating app. We started Tali’s Bagels together and got married ten months into business. Although we had our apprehensions about working together full-time in addition to living together and raising two rescue dogs – it has been a really wonderful experience so far. Interestingly, we’ve been in good company. We work alongside a handful of other couple-owned businesses in our Downtown Honolulu commercial kitchen, Hana Kitchens. We came into business with the ability to communicate with one another and to problem solve as a team, which has been a huge strength for us.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
So many of our customers found out about us through word of mouth. Whether it was a recommendation in a Jews of Hawaii Facebook group, or the transplant New Yorkers who tell all their east coast friends about us, our growth has been organic and consistent. We promote all of our events and products on Instagram, and we have had a handful of interviews and write-ups that have been extremely helpful in sharing our story with a larger audience. Our reputation relies on our honesty and authenticity. We are transparent about our process and when you send an e-mail or an Instagram message, you are always speaking directly with one of the owners.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.talisbagels.com
- Instagram: @talisbagels
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/talisbagels
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/talis-bagels-and-schmear-honolulu
Image Credits
N/A we own all images