Little Boat Bagels is planned for Magnolia Village, at 3213 W. McGraw St., the former Slice Box Pizza space. It will be a distinct project from the team’s Fremont shop, Backyard Bagel: owner Aaron Emas plans to use sourdough bagels and build the menu around Danish-inspired open-faced sandwiches.
According to It's a Shanda, Emas said the team initially intended to simply open another Backyard location in Magnolia, but concluded the new shop needed its own customer experience, menu, physical environment, brand, and bagel. The McGraw Street site had been under consideration for about a year before the outlet's report, and it previously operated as a second location for Slice Box Pizza, an East Coast-style slice shop that got its start in Seattle's SoDo district in 2016, according to Axios.
A Sourdough Departure From Backyard's New York Style
Where Backyard Bagel built its name on traditional New York-style rounds, Little Boat is developing a different animal entirely: a sourdough recipe aiming for an open crumb, a glassy crust, and plenty of blisters, the outlet's report notes. The shop will bake everything on cedar boards using a deck oven, and the kitchen is being designed open enough that customers can watch bagels get boiled, baked, and loaded into baskets.
Emas built his following well before any of this. He originally started his Seattle baking venture as a home delivery service and pop-up called Aaron's Bagels before rebranding to Backyard Bagel, according to Seattle magazine. That brand later opened its first storefront in Fremont at 4310 Fremont Ave. N. in summer 2024, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign that pulled in $25,855 from 269 backers.
Classic Bagels Meet Danish Smørrebrød
Little Boat will also offer familiar bagel-shop items, but its signature sandwiches are planned as open-faced smørrebrød-inspired creations, according to It's a Shanda. Traditional smørrebrød is served on buttered rugbrød, a dense rye bread, with toppings such as cold meats, pickled herring, smoked fish, or vegetables; True North Kitchen explains the Danish tradition. Emas said several months spent eating smørrebrød in Copenhagen inspired the idea of adapting it for sourdough bagels.
The name Little Boat reflects Emas’s interest in fishing and the history of the Gerda III, a Danish lighthouse tender that helped smuggle Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden during World War II. The vessel ferried roughly 300 refugees to safety in October 1943 and is now preserved at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum. Emas, a Bainbridge Island native, is incorporating that history alongside his Copenhagen inspiration for the shop.
Landing in a Neighborhood Known for Its Bakeries
The McGraw Street address sits in Magnolia Village, the primary retail and commercial corridor for Seattle's Magnolia peninsula and a stretch already known as home to a cluster of local bakeries and retailers, according to Discover Magnolia. Little Boat's arrival also lands amid a broader citywide shift: Seattle has been riding an artisanal bagel boom in recent years, with local bakers leaning on long-fermentation doughs and regional Pacific Northwest flours rather than strictly replicating New York styles, Seattle magazine reported.
What the local business context shows
The Magnolia Chamber of Commerce describes its membership as including small businesses, retail, light manufacturing, services, and hospitality. That documents a mix of business types across Magnolia, but does not establish how Magnolia Village’s commercial corridor differs from Fremont’s or verify a concentration of bakeries in the Village.
Little Boat Bagels expects to open by the end of November, though the timeline depends on permitting, the It's a Shanda report notes. Updates on the buildout are being shared through Instagram and the business's website.
