PopUp Bagels: The Freshest Bagel Store in Tribeca

Few foods are more important to New York’s identity than bagels. Affordable, familiar, and reminiscent of the city’s history, bagel shops are more than just a place to eat.

PopUp Bagels is a popular bagel chain that was introduced to Tribeca when it opened a storefront on the corner of Greenwich Street and Reade Street in early February. The company was founded in 2020 in Westport, Connecticut, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has since expanded to locations across the Northeast and along the West Coast, specifically California.

PopUp Bagels grows its popularity through social media marketing platforms. Their weekly schmear options create a sense of discovery and incite curiosity, building a brand focused on selling the experience as much as the product. Most stores do not offer seating, reinforcing the fast-paced and rapid image. However, this has led to a growing disparity between stores like PopUp Bagels and traditional New York delicatessens. The focus on novelty takes away from the value of the reliability and history behind classic bagel shops, with even the name “PopUp Bagels” itself symbolizing the company’s lack of permanence. 

The Tribeca location feels welcoming, but incredibly streamlined and economical; their merchandise is loudly displayed at the front of the small store, and their motto, “Not Famous, but Known,” is emblazoned across the space. The store was dog-friendly, and the employees were incredibly welcoming, telling us that fresh bagels of all kinds would be available within the next couple of minutes.

We bought the $20 six-bagel option with cream cheese, as well as the schmear of the week—brown sugar cinnamon butter—totaling $27. We bought all five available bagels: salt, poppy, sesame, everything, and two plain. PopUp’s bagels are smaller than most, and between the two of us, six bagels were a perfect amount for lunch.

What sets PopUp’s bagels apart is that they are made fresh throughout the day, rather than once in the morning. They do not offer a toasting option because it simply isn’t necessary. As the bagels sit throughout the day, they become less noteworthy, but out of the oven? Delicious. 

We tried each bagel with both the cream cheese and the brown sugar cinnamon butter, both of which were great. The cream cheese tasted fresh, and the cinnamon butter added a unique flavor, being an uncommon bagel spread that other establishments don’t offer. Also, the schmear portions of 0.5 pounds were incredibly generous.

The immediate standout was the salt bagel. This is a less popular bagel option at most establishments, and we can’t fathom why. It perfectly complemented the cinnamon butter, with the salt adding complexity to the cream cheese and balancing the sweetness of the butter. It was also appetizing on its own, whereas the plain bagel tasted a little, well, plain without a schmear. 

While we enjoyed the sesame and poppy a lot, we didn’t find them to fit especially well with the cinnamon butter, but we can imagine they’d go well with more savory weekly schmears. Additionally, they were incredibly messy to eat, especially the sesame. We must take into consideration that PopUp’s “grip, rip, and dip” serving style is much less neat than the traditional sandwich style, but the seeds themselves seemed less attached to the bagels than most other bagels we’ve had. This may be attributed to how fresh the bagels were, but especially for a grab-and-go business model, ease of eating is an important factor in the dining experience. A possible solution could be to have an option of slicing the bagels and adding cream cheese at the store, minimizing mess.

The everything bagel, a combination of poppy, sesame, and salt, went perfectly with the cream cheese. But like the sesame and poppy, it wasn’t the best match for the cinnamon butter. However, it was strangely less untidy than the previous two, and we liked the addition of the salt, which differentiated it from other establishments’ everything bagels.

Overall, we’d highly recommend the salt bagel, but each of the bagels was excellent when eaten fresh. The brown sugar cinnamon butter was delicious as well—it would be a welcome addition to their regular schmears: plain cream cheese, scallion cream cheese, and salted butter, as a contrasting sweet option.

Even without seating, the eating experience was enjoyable, except for difficulty with the sesame and poppy seeds. However, it doesn’t encourage the same community and relaxation one gets from eating at a location with seating. Even chains near Stuyvesant, such as Starbucks, McDonald's, and Zucker’s, have seating, making them popular locations for students to go during their free periods, as well as before and after school. PopUp lacks this, which may be a deterrent—especially in the colder months or on rainy days when outside seating is less welcoming. 

Cost is another deterrent. Rather than allowing customers to order individual bagels at a lower price, they only allow for orders in groups of three, six, or twelve. The starting price for three bagels and a schmear is $13, and an additional schmear costs $7, which makes trying multiple flavors more expensive. This lack of flexibility detracts from the accessibility of bagels as a quick, easy breakfast option, making a trip to PopUp Bagels feel more like an occasion than an everyday routine. When compared to nearby stores like Zucker’s, which offers a student discount, the prices feel egregious and unnecessary. 

However, fresh bagels are sacred to nearly every New Yorker, and having them continuously available so close to Stuyvesant has already made PopUp Bagels a location frequented by students. Despite the mess, the lack of seating, and the high price, we will return for the welcoming ambience, weekly schmears, and bagels fresh out of the oven.