Expert Mode: Scaling Authenticity—How H&H Bagels is Growing Without Losing Its New York Soul
This article was based on the interview with Featuring insights from Jay Rushin, CEO of H&H Bagels by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
H&H Bagels isn’t just a bagel shop—it’s a cultural institution. Whether you know it from Seinfeld, Sex and the City, or your own morning walk on the Upper West Side, the brand has always been iconically New York. But what happens when a brand that’s inseparable from its hometown tries to scale nationally? Can you grow without diluting what made you beloved in the first place?
Jay Rushin, CEO of H&H Bagels, is answering that question in real time. With more than 70 franchise locations signed and stores popping up from Boca Raton to Santa Monica, he’s leading the expansion of a brand that New Yorkers have treated like a sacred institution since the 1970s. In this conversation, Rushin shares how he’s modernizing the brand while staying true to its roots, why the customer experience had to evolve before the business could scale, and what it takes to preserve product authenticity across a national footprint.
When Legacy Becomes a Trap
Brands love to talk about authenticity—but Rushin is refreshingly honest about its limits. “Authenticity can also become a trap,” he says. “It limits evolution.” His point? Being overly precious about tradition can prevent the kind of change necessary to stay relevant.
Rushin’s strategy is to preserve what matters most—the bagel recipe, the kettling process, the commitment to quality ingredients—and rethink everything else. The service model? Totally overhauled. The customer experience? Redesigned. The brand identity? Repositioned to be a national player. But the core product stays rooted in the original New York approach: every bagel is still made in a centralized bakery in Queens using New York City water.
“We want to stay connected to our history,” he says, “but we also want to improve every day.”
For a founder who came from a 20-year career in finance and admittedly had no restaurant background, this flexibility has been a strength. He didn’t enter the bagel business with romantic notions. He entered with fresh eyes—and that helped him challenge assumptions baked into the traditional New York bagel model.
The Failed Redesign That Led to the Right One
The journey to scale began with fixing the customer experience—and the first fix failed. Rushin’s initial attempt to modernize service followed the QSR script: customers place an order at the counter, it prints to the kitchen, and the food is assembled out of sight. But in the bagel business, where customization is king, that didn’t work.
“There are so many modifiers,” Rushin explains. “Light toasted, dark toasted, heavy spread, scooped—it overwhelmed the system. The cashier couldn’t keep up.”
Mistakes went up. Satisfaction went down. So they scrapped it.
Instead, Rushin’s team adopted a Chipotle-style line experience where customers watch their bagels being assembled in real time. It’s theatrical, efficient, and accurate—especially in a category where customers have strong opinions about their orders. That transparency reduced errors and created a better connection between staff and customer.
The breakthrough came in 2021 with the opening of H&H’s Moynihan Train Hall location. Within a week, Rushin says, they knew they had cracked the code. That success laid the foundation for franchising: if the experience could be standardized and scaled, so could the brand.
Growing with the Right People (and Letting the Product Lead)
With more than a dozen territories now signed, Rushin is methodical about choosing franchise partners. While the earliest groups had a deep personal connection to the brand—many were New Yorkers who had grown up eating H&H—more recent partners are drawn by its national recognition and cult status.
What unites them isn’t geography, it’s alignment. “They get what we’re doing and where we’re going,” Rushin says. That includes a commitment to the core product: every H&H bagel is still made in that Queens bakery and shipped fresh. It also includes buying into the reimagined service model and store design.
Franchisees bring fresh ideas, and the company listens. “We have consistent operations calls with our owners,” Rushin says. “We’re very open-minded to new ideas and making adjustments on the fly.” That nimbleness is part of what keeps the brand feeling local—even as it grows into new markets like D.C., West Palm Beach, Knoxville, and Los Angeles.
Culture and Iconography—But With Forward Momentum
H&H’s appearance in shows like Seinfeld and Sex and the City adds a certain cultural weight. But Rushin is careful not to let nostalgia limit his team’s imagination.
“We love the pop culture history,” he says. “But I’ve always told our marketing team—it should never hold us back.”
The goal is to build a brand that works in 2025, not just one that reminds people of 1995. That means using the cultural cachet as seasoning, not the main course. It’s a balancing act: draw from the legacy, but don’t get stuck in it.
This philosophy guides their branding and marketing as well as their operations. Rushin’s team isn’t afraid to innovate, but they’re also not trying to chase trends. They want timeless, not trendy. They want to be iconic everywhere—not just in New York.
Conclusion
Scaling a local brand is never just about adding new locations. It’s about preserving what matters, reimagining what doesn’t, and doing the hard operational work long before a ribbon gets cut in a new city. Jay Rushin and H&H Bagels are showing what it looks like to grow a brand not by diluting it—but by clarifying its essence.
The bagel recipe stays the same. The experience evolves. And the company continues to expand, not because they’re chasing growth—but because they earned the right to do it by getting the foundation right first.
Rushin says it best:
“Success only comes after multiple mistakes and misdirection. You have to be open to error to succeed in anything.”
In a world of cookie-cutter chains and trend-chasing startups, that kind of clarity, patience, and willingness to experiment might just be the most agile play of all. It’s man plus machine—versus everyone else who didn’t bother to adapt.
Your move.
