Bagels with a schmear of enterprise capital

I’m a bit of a bagel snob. I as soon as baked bagels in a single day with the crew at Higher Bagels for a profile on its founders again in school. I sometimes bake them at residence and nonetheless go to my childhood bagel store, Abraham’s, virtually each time I’m in New England. I preserve a sesame bagel from Feltz Bagels on my desk.

Bagels carry a sure nostalgia for me. I’ve core childhood recollections of driving to Abraham’s with my dad and sister, choosing up a dozen bagels, and ripping aside a recent one to share on the drive residence.

So once I noticed that Popup Bagels, a mom-and-pop-looking bagel store chain, raised enterprise capital, I used to be like . . . what? Isn’t this actually what small enterprise loans are for? Popup Bagels raised an $8 million Sequence A led by Stripes, with participation from Habitat Companions and Tastemaker Capital.

Certain, BetterBrand, a startup that makes high-protein bagels with suspiciously low quantities of carbs, just lately raised $6 million in enterprise funding. However they’re an e-commerce meals tech firm, and that has VC written throughout it. Not a spot to go purchase a bagel in particular person.

Popup Bagels’ founder Adam Goldberg sees it otherwise, although. He advised TechCrunch+ that he’s not taken with ever taking up debt — good luck with that — and enterprise capital is smart as a result of Popup has sturdy demand, runs a lean operation and is seeking to develop quickly. Two of the backers — Stripes and Tastemaker Capital — have expertise scaling meals startups, too.

“If you find yourself disrupting an trade, and have one thing that’s new and thrilling, and persons are stoked to attempt it, it’s nice to have capital to roll out quick and it is usually nice to have good folks behind that capital,” Goldberg mentioned. “We turned down lots of people who wished to put in writing a verify that didn’t actually assist. Stripes has expertise in doing these roll-outs.”

Taking a more in-depth look, a few of that positively rings true.