Barrett's Bagels sold roughly 1,000 bagels on its first Friday and about 1,500 more on each of the following two days after opening its new storefront on Speedway Road on Madison's West Side, capping a three-year climb from farmers' market folding table to full-time bakery. Owner Ben Anderson built the business from a solo pop-up in 2023 into a brand with a loyal following, and the sellout weekend marked its debut as a permanent, walk-in shop.
The transformation from pop-up to brick-and-mortar is detailed in The Capital Times, which reports that Barrett's Bagels now operates Friday through Sunday starting at 7 a.m. until the shop sells out. Anderson posted an Instagram video after that first full weekend, a nod to how the business has long used social media to share sales figures, bagel-making techniques, and updates on the shop-opening process, according to the same report. Barrett's Bagels has built an audience of about 25,000 social media followers along the way.
From Shared Kitchens to a Storefront of His Own
Before landing on Speedway Road, Anderson made bagels in a shared kitchen in Stoughton and later scaled production at Pasture and Plenty's P&P Makeshop, a commercial incubator kitchen on Old University Avenue built to support local food entrepreneurs, according to Pasture and Plenty. That incubator space, which launched in 2021, gave Anderson access to the convection ovens lined with baking stones that Barrett's Bagels still uses today — equipment the business adopted largely because it was what was available in those shared kitchens, per the Cap Times report.
Anderson built his initial customer base through weekly pop-ups at the Monroe Street Farmers' Market, a near-westside gathering that has run Sundays from May through October outside Edgewood High School since 2015, according to the Monroe Street Farmers' Market. Anderson has said demand was lower when he first started the business, a reminder of how far the bagels have come since those early market days, per the Cap Times. Due to the demands of transitioning to the Speedway Road storefront, Barrett's Bagels stepped back from its regular full-season vendor spot at the market for 2026, though the business still plans to return to future markets, according to its own FAQ page.
Spotting a Roof Vent, Landing a Building
Anderson's path to 3742 Speedway Road began when he noticed an existing roof hood vent on the building, a leftover sign that the space could support commercial ovens, as reported by The Badger Herald. The single-story commercial building has housed small local businesses for nearly 100 years. Most recently it was home to Sunset Yarn, which operated there from 2020 through this past May.
The Cap Times reports that Lynette Tucker bought the Sunset Yarn building in 2020 planning to run the shop for five years before retiring, and Anderson reached out to her directly to express interest in the space once it became available. The name Barrett's Bagels itself carries a family story: it draws on Anderson's middle name, his mother's maiden name, and his son Barrett, who was an infant when the pop-up launched in 2023, according to the Badger Herald's reporting. Anderson's family also co-owns Barrett Wool Co. in Madison.
Crowdfunding the Final Stretch With Gift Cards
Finishing the build-out required about $30,000 more than Anderson had on hand, so Barrett's Bagels launched a gift-card campaign offering cards at a 20 percent discount, according to the Cap Times. Customers responded fast: the shop sold nearly $60,000 worth of gift cards in two days, roughly double what the campaign had set out to raise. Anderson has said that kind of transparency, sharing numbers and process openly with customers, helps people understand the business.
That openness extended to hiring, too. When Barrett's Bagels posted a job advertisement that listed the salary, the shop received a large number of applicants, per the Cap Times report.
What's Behind the Bagels
Every bagel at Barrett's Bagels is hand-rolled, and many menu items are made from scratch. The dough ferments for 36 hours and includes malt, and every bagel is boiled before it goes into the oven. Anderson's bakery resume includes stints at Madison Sourdough and Batch Bakehouse, along with work at Willy Street Co-op, teaching, and farming at Sprouting Acres in Cambridge, according to Barrett's Bagels' own team page.
The shop's bestselling item, the spicy cheese bagel, is an homage to Stella's Bakery's Hot & Spicy Cheese Bread, a Madison food icon invented by accident in 1988 after a batch of empanada dough went wrong, which now sells more than 64,000 loaves a year at the Dane County Farmers' Market, per 6AM City. The most popular sandwich, the Bee's Knees, pairs egg, cheese, scallion cream cheese, and hot honey. Barrett's Bagels also serves coffee and tea and plans to roll out seasonal bagel flavors.
Joining a Crowded Local Bagel Scene
Barrett's Bagels enters a Madison market with deep bagel roots. Bagels Forever opened on University Avenue in 1973 as the city's first retail New York-style bagel bakery and has operated there for more than 50 years, according to Bagels Forever. Downtown, Gotham Bagels has hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, and deck-oven baked its bagels near Capitol Square since 2006 and has since expanded to additional locations across southern Wisconsin and Chicago, per Gotham Bagels. Against that backdrop, Barrett's Bagels' jump from Sunday-only pop-up to a sold-out West Side storefront marks a new chapter in a local scene that already spans generations of bagel-making in the city.
