ORLANDO, Fla. – After starting as a cottage business with online sales about three years ago, Central Florida-based Jeff’s Bagel Run is about to undergo a huge expansion.
1337 Capital — which is run by Justin Wetherill, the co-founder of the uBreakiFix chain of mobile device repair shops — announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with Jeff and Danielle Perera, the owners of Jeff’s Bagel Run.
The partnership includes plans to expand the small chain nationwide, according to a news release. The company said this would include four new Central Florida locations set to open sometime in 2023.
Check out the Florida Foodie podcast. You can find every episode in the media player below:
No opening dates or locations have been announced.
Jeff’s Bagel Run first began when Jeff Perera found himself out of work in 2019. His wife, Danielle Perera, had been a stay-at-home mom for a few years at this point and had been planning to rejoin the workforce, allowing Jeff Perera to take over the stay-at-home parenting duties.
“We were both home — we had that overlap, and neither of us were working,” Jeff Perera said on the Florida Foodie podcast. “And we were driving to Winter Park, 45 minutes to get bagels. And (I said), ‘This is silly — Like, there’s no bagel shop on our side of town.’ So she said, ‘Why don’t you make me one?’”
Within a few months of perfecting his bagel recipe, Jeff Perera was looking to sell his boiled and baked rings online. The bagel sales saw some early success, but once the pandemic hit, the pair started looking at the business in a different way.
[ADD YOUR BUSINESS TO THE FLORIDA FOODIE DIRECTORY]
The couple started selling more bagels through their social media page and were quickly overwhelmed by the amount of business they were receiving.
“We’d get, you know, 200 to 300 messages all at the same time (asking for bagels),” Jeff Perera said.
“It worked in the beginning, and then it just grew too fast,” Danielle Perera said.
The pair eventually built a website to handle the influx of orders.
In 2021, the pair opened their first brick-and-mortar location in Ocoee. A year later, they opened a second shop in Orlando’s College Park neighborhood.