A North Avenue fixture that has fed New Rochelle bagel lovers for more than two decades reopened on October 8 under new ownership, with a refreshed space, updated bagel recipes, and an expanded coffee menu. Traditional Bagel Cafe at 1279 North Ave. marked the occasion with a grand reopening ribbon-cutting ceremony, kicking off a new chapter for a shop whose homemade cream cheeses and breakfast sandwiches had already earned it a loyal following.
The cafe is now operated by Prince A. Sanders and his family, as reported by Daily Voice. Sanders, a New Rochelle native, currently serves as General Manager of The Wall Street Hotel in Lower Manhattan, a role he's held since 2025 following a hospitality career spanning more than 20 years with brands including W Hotels, The Ritz-Carlton, and EDITION Hotels, according to LEADERS Magazine. Sanders told Daily Voice that taking over the cafe is an opportunity to invest in the community where he grew up.
Before his hospitality career, Sanders danced professionally with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago until an injury ended that path. He later became a children's author, writing the book series “The Extraordinarily Ordinary Life of Prince,” which focuses on life lessons in etiquette and self-expression drawn from his own youth, per a release carried by PR Newswire. He received The Ritz-Carlton Leader of the Year Award in 2010 and helped launch EDITION properties in Hawaii, Istanbul, and London, the same hospitality profile notes.
A Family Operation Rooted in Brooklyn Training
The Sanders family's bagel education began in 2025 at Myrtle Ave Bagel in Brooklyn, where they learned bagel production, staffing, purchasing, and daily operations before bringing those lessons back to New Rochelle. Day-to-day operations at Traditional Bagel Cafe are now overseen by Petar Sanders, Prince's husband, who brings five years of coffee-industry experience to the role, including helping open several Joe Coffee locations. That background lines up with New Rochelle's own coffee scene: Joe Coffee once ran a cafe inside the city's Stella residential tower, a 27-story building completed in 2021 that brought 380 rental apartments and ground-floor retail to downtown as part of a transit-oriented development push, according to L+M Development Partners.
The cafe's new coffee menu includes single-origin Colombian Supremo drip coffee, Arabica espresso, vanilla, hazelnut, seasonal pumpkin, and peppermint flavors, and sugar-free options. The broader menu still covers the shop's traditional lineup of bagels, flagels, bialys, mini bagels, muffins, cream cheeses, salads, sandwiches, and wraps.
Cleaner Ingredients, Same Expected Taste
Perhaps the most notable change is in the dough itself. Per the owners, Traditional Bagel Cafe now uses unbleached and unbromated flour for all of its bagels, and it has removed Red Dye 40 and other artificial colorings from its recipes in favor of natural alternatives. Sanders said the recipe changes were made carefully to preserve the expected taste and experience, and the family has said the ingredient changes aim to improve quality without sacrificing the taste and texture customers expect.
The shift away from bromated flour comes as New York State moves toward an outright ban on the additive. In April, the state legislature passed the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, which prohibits the manufacture, sale, and distribution of food containing potassium bromate, Red Dye 3, and propylparaben statewide, as reported by Pizza Today. Food distributors will have one year to clear existing bromated flour stock once the law takes full effect. Potassium bromate, long used in commercial baking to strengthen dough elasticity and speed baking times, was designated a possible human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer back in 1999 following animal studies linking it to kidney and thyroid tumors, even though the FDA has never enacted a federal ban beyond voluntary guidelines issued in 1991, according to The Official Wasserstrom Blog.
Red dye regulation has followed a similar arc. The FDA officially revoked its authorization for Red Dye No. 3 in food in January 2025, a move that came after California passed its own 2023 law banning several synthetic food additives statewide, per Food Safety Magazine. For Sanders, the standard is personal rather than regulatory: he said his rule is not to serve the community anything he would not serve his own children.
A Changing Corridor in Upper New Rochelle
Traditional Bagel Cafe's building at 1279 North Ave. sits in Wykagyl Plaza, an 8,575-square-foot pre-war retail structure built in 1928 within a Neighborhood Business zoning district along the North Avenue commercial corridor near Wykagyl Gardens, according to a LoopNet listing. The surrounding Wykagyl business district has seen its own shifts lately, including state licensing granted in April 2025 for The Reserve, a large retail cannabis dispensary set inside a former bank vault at 1307 North Ave., as reported by Talk of the Sound.
Hoodline previously named Traditional Bagel Cafe the highest-rated bagel spot in New Rochelle back in 2018, a ranking built on customer praise for its homemade cream cheeses and breakfast sandwiches. Nearly eight years later, the shop is leaning on that reputation while betting that cleaner ingredients and a Brooklyn-trained family operation can carry it forward.
Traditional Bagel Cafe is planning a community grand reopening event for November 7, running from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. and open to everyone. The celebration will include food tastings, giveaways, and raffles for neighbors curious to see what's changed — and what hasn't — at the North Avenue spot.
