Lender's Bagels
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Lender's Bagels is a brand and producer of bagels, and which pioneered the frozen bagel industry. It became a North American leader in the marketing, distribution and sales of its bagels, and the brand evolved into one of the top five fresh and frozen bagel producers in North America.
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[edit] Early history
Lender's Bagel Bakery started when baker Harry Lender immigrated to the United States from Lublin, Poland in August 1927.[bm 1] After first working in a bagel bakery in Passaic, New Jersey, Lender purchased his own bakery in New Haven, Connecticut for $600, which he called the "New York Bagel Bakery", and brought his family to join him on December 31, 1929.
Fortunately for Lender's business, this time represented a peak period for New Haven's population not only in size (having grown from 50,000 residents to over 162,000 in the previous 50 years), but also in diversity, with immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, Italy, and the American South. In particular, the number of Jews had risen from 1,000 in 1880 to 3,200 in 1887, 5,500 in 1900, and then 25,000 in 1930, accounting for almost one sixth of the population. The center of the Jewish community was the Oak Street neighborhood, creating a ready-made market for Lender's bakery. Aside from sales to individuals, Lender sold his bagels to other bakeries as well as delicatessens and restaurants.
By 1934, Lender was able to move to a large former Italian bakery, in a less expensive neighborhood. As the largest sales of bagels came on Sunday morning, Saturday night was the busiest time at the bakery, and people of all ethnicities began to stop by the bakery on Saturday nights to purchase fresh bagels; it even became an attraction for people from out of town. At the same time, Lender himself developed a reputation for generosity which made his bakery popular among both the citizenry, and the public leaders.
[edit] New processes lead to growth
By the mid 1950s, the logistics of producing as many as 6,000 bagels for sale on Sunday morning, in contrast to relatively low activity the rest of the week, began to demand a solution. As a result, in 1954 Lender perfected a method of freezing the bagels, so that the labor could be spread more evenly throughout the week.[bm 2] At first, this was kept secret as it was felt that customers who were happily buying the bagels would reject them if they knew they had been frozen. After two years, however, the bakery accidentally delivered the frozen bagels instead of thawing them first, and the secret was revealed. Although customers were initially angry, the realization that these were the same bagels they had been satisfied with for the previous two years eventually won them over; and with the secret now revealed, the New York Bagel Bakery was free to market the frozen bagels further from New Haven, for instance to resorts in the Catskills.
Further refinements were developed, such as pre-slicing the bagels and packing them in polyethylene bags to keep them fresh after thawing, and the bakery began selling the packaged frozen bagels in supermarkets. To introduce bagels to an unfamiliar public, the Lender family would prepare and distribute them in supermarket aisles. This was successful, and the plastic bagged, frozen six pack of presliced Lender's Frozen Bagels began to gain market share.
Up to that point, the bakery's proceeds had gone mostly into expansion, and now a whole new level of growth was undertaken. Production was switched over to rotary ovens, rather than labor intensive open, flat ovens. Machinery capable of processing the tough bagel dough was devised. New varieties of bagels were invented; by 1959 these accounted for half of the sales.
[edit] Large scale expansion
In 1960, Harry Lender died, and his sons Sam and Murray, who had been running the bakery with him, continued. (Oldest son Hyman had previously left the family business.) When youngest son Marvin graduated from college, he became a partner as well, and shortly thereafter Sam retired. The two brothers teamed up to expand operations, with Marvin managing the bakery and Murray in charge of sales. In 1965 the bakery, now renamed "Lender's Bagel Bakery", moved to a 12,000 square foot plant on the Boston Post Road in West Haven, in order to have ample reserve capacity for expansion; business increased so quickly that the bakery was working at full capacity within a year. Under Marvin Lender, it eventually grew to a highly automated 25,000 square foot bakery, pioneering the modern automated bagel bakery. The company grew from six employees when it moved to West Haven to 600 in 1984, working in four bagel factories producing more than 750,000,000 bagels a year.
Murray Lender, meanwhile, was traveling throughout the United States marketing Lender's Frozen Bagels to a country which was disdainful of frozen foods and unfamiliar with bagels. His success helped elevate the entire frozen food industry. In response to observations that March was the slowest month for sales of frozen foods, Murray Lender organized the frozen food industry to declare March Frozen Foods Month, raising sales dramatically. In recognition of his contributions to the industry as a whole, he was elected chairman of the National Frozen Food Association, nominated to the Halls of Fame of the International Deli-Bakery Association and the Frozen Food Association, and named "Man of the Year" by the Frozen Food Association of New England, the National Prepared Frozen Food Association, and the Connecticut Food Stores Association. In response to the public's growing consciousness of health foods and the drop in popularity of white bread, he began to stress bagels as more natural baked goods, and Lender's Bagels became one of the first products to voluntarily include nutritional information on the package.
[edit] Innovative marketing
Murray Lender's advertisements and marketing promotions put bagels into the public consciousness. He appeared as a guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.[bm 3] He created green bagels for Saint Patrick's Day, oval bagels for President Lyndon Johnson to be photographed eating in the Oval Office, and "bagel heads", miniature decorated bagels, in the likeness of the world leaders attending the 9th G7 summit in 1983 .
In 1974, Lender’s had bought their major competitor, Abel's Bagels in Buffalo, New York ,[bm 4] after which they had almost no competition. In 1984, when Lender’s sold $65 million worth of bagels, their closest competitor sold less than $1 million. However, rumors that giant corporations Sara Lee and Kraft Foods were going to enter the now thriving frozen bagel business convinced the brothers that the time had come to leave. In the spring of 1984, Lender's Frozen Bagels was purchased by Kraft Foods, with the stipulation that Marvin would remain president and Murray spokesman for the next two years. Murray Lender publicized the sale in characteristic form, by holding "the marriage of the century", with Murray and Marvin escorting a six foot tall Lender’s Bagel, "Len", down the aisle to meet his new bride, “Phyl”, a Kraft Philadelphia brand cream cheese. Despite finally receiving the cash proceeds of their years of labor, millions of dollars, the brothers immediately went back to work, opening a chain of bagel restaurants and delicatessens, "H. Lender & Sons" in memory of their father, Harry Lender.
Kraft sold Lender's Bagels to Aurora Foods in 1999. Pinnacle Foods bought Aurora in 2003.[citation needed] The Lender's Bagels brand is still in production with a wide variety of bagels to this day.
[edit] Article improvement notices
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[edit] References
- Notes
- Balinska, Maria 2008:
- Bibliography
- Balinska, Maria (2008). The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread , Yale University Press, November 2008, ISBN 0300112297, ISBN 978-0300112290.
- Horowitz, Andy, & Fischer, David S., editor. "Jews In New Haven Volume IX: The Lender Family of New Haven, Connecticut", Greater New Haven Jewish Historical Society (JHS), 2009.
- New Haven Independent. "Secret of The Frozen Bagel, Revealed", New Haven Independent, May 29, 2009.
