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Key Takeaways
- With no culinary background, Jeff started experimenting in his kitchen for a bagel he couldn’t find nearby.
- He and his wife sold roughly $85,000 worth of bagels from their home.
- They gambled on opening their first store, and the results were better than they could have asked for.
Jeff Perera wasn’t walking the halls during the 2026 Restaurant Leadership Conference. He was in the kitchen.
At the JW Marriott in Phoenix, the founder of Jeff’s Bagel Run was boiling and baking nearly 300 bagels to serve more than 650 restaurant executives before breakfast.
“It’s insane,” Jeff said. “We’re gonna see if we can figure this out.”
Six years earlier, he had never made a bagel.
In 2019, Jeff lost his job. His wife, Danielle, returned to work while he stayed home with their kids. The family had one problem they couldn’t solve: finding a decent bagel without driving 45 minutes.
“So she’s like, ‘You should just learn to make me one.’” Jeff said. “I had no culinary background, never made anything from scratch in my life
What began as a challenge quickly became something bigger. Friends and neighbors started asking if they could buy his bagels.
“I literally learned how to do this three months ago,” he said. “Why would you buy them from me?”
The demand kept growing. Before long, Jeff and Danielle had sold roughly $85,000 worth of bagels from their home, eventually outgrowing Florida’s cottage food laws and searching for their first storefront. Opening a shop meant betting everything.
Jeff and Danielle sold their house to help fund the business. Danielle had built a successful corporate career and wasn’t ready to walk away from a steady paycheck, benefits, a 401(k) and stock options.
“I’m like, ‘Just go full bagel,’” Jeff said. She wasn’t convinced. However, the leap paid off.
Before opening their first store, Danielle budgeted about $800 in sales for opening day. Instead, Jeff says, they did about $1,600. For Jeff and Danielle, “go full bagel” became more than a phrase. It became a commitment to bet on themselves when there were no guarantees.
Pull back the curtain
Jeff estimates he’s baked more than 1.5 million bagels. About 800,000 of them came before Jeff’s Bagel Run ever started franchising.
At the Restaurant Leadership Conference, he worked with unfamiliar ovens and someone else’s equipment while explaining every step of the process.
“We’re gonna bake them right here,” he said. “Baking off premises is wild, but we’re gonna do it.”
As trays move in and out of the oven, Jeff explained why bagels are boiled before they’re baked, why he uses barley malt syrup and the small adjustments that come from years of repetition.
“I love peeling back that curtain,” he explained.
For Jeff, the same philosophy that led him to teach strangers in a hotel kitchen also shaped how he built his brand.
“I think it’s important for us to share our story,” he said. “I think it’s all part of the journey. This storytelling experience.”
Long before Jeff’s Bagel Run grew to 35 locations with another 180 in development, he documented the business one day at a time. He posted an Instagram Story every morning for 397 consecutive days, introducing the bagel of the day and inviting customers into the process.
“People would ask me, ‘How did you get so many followers?” Perera says. “Consistency. I went 397 straight days posting a story that said, ‘Good morning from The Bagel Run. Today’s bagel of the day is…’”
That same commitment led to The Weekly Run podcast, where Jeff and his team continue to share what they’re learning as they build the business.
“So many people are like, ‘Don’t come in the kitchen. This is where the secret’s made,’” Jeff said. “No, you’re looking for people that love bagels as much as you do.”
Storytelling didn’t replace great bagels. It amplified them.
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