It looks like Davidovich Bakery, a Queens company hoping to pick up where H&H Bagels left off, is coming to the Essex Street Market.
In recent days, the Economic Development Corp. (which runs the market) was mum about the new tenant. The unnamed bagel purveyor wanted to stay under the radar for the moment, we were told. But now signage has gone up inside the little stall on the north end of the market.
Davidovich Bakery is a 15-year-old company which describes itself as “the only wholesale bakery left employing artisan bakers who still kettle boil bagels and bake them on wooden planks in a rotational shelf oven.” As our friends at West Side Rag reported last year, the bakery hoped to take over the shuttered H&H store at 80th and Broadway, but it didn’t work out. H&H’s last stores closed in 2012. Owner Gene Davidovich Sedov told the Wall Street Journal he intended to open a dozen or so retail locations in the next few years. The Essex Market stall would apparently be the first stand-along retail venture. The bagels are available at many shops and grocery stores throughout Manhattan, although they’re generally not sold under the Davidovich name.
In January of 2012, Davidovich was producing 20,000 bagels per day and the company hoped to double their output. Last year, it won a grant from the EDC to to set up an incubator – a training program for its workers. “Our largest competitor has ceased to exist. People have looked to us as the heir apparent,” Marc Fintz, an executive with the company told the Daily News. “Our goal is to be the most respected bagel brand name in the world.”
