How Boichik Bagels built a Bay Area bagel empire

The bagel empire wasn't where things started. Emily Winston just set out to make one good bagel — the kind she grew up eating on trips to Manhattan with her father. He'd pick up bagels from the iconic H&H Bagels and accompaniments from Zabar's as a special treat to bring home to her in New Jersey. After moving to the Bay Area, where a decent New York bagel seemed impossible to find, she decided to make her own.

"I'm my target market," Winston says. "This whole enterprise is entirely self-serving. I missed my bagel, so I figured out how to make a bagel like my childhood favorites, and then I built a business to produce that bagel on repeat." Turns out, her bagel was the bagel of many people's dreams.

That single-minded pursuit of quality has taken Boichik Bagels from a kitchen experiment to a Bay Area institution to a standout presence across California and beyond, a growth story Fremont Bank is proud to have been a part of since Winston opened her business account.

From countertop to storefront

Winston started experimenting with bagels in 2010, inspired by curiosity and nostalgia and shaped by her engineering mindset. By 2017, the experiment had become a pop-up under a cottage food license.

Word of mouth did the rest. Long before Boichik made headlines, the buzz was building. Regulars lined up, some driving across the Bay or showing up long before the doors opened to make sure they didn't miss out. 

Working out of her own kitchen meant Winston had to cap production at nine dozen bagels a day. It wasn't nearly enough. "There was a line down the street, and I had to turn most people away," Winston recalls. "That made it clear: There's demand, and this needs a real bagel shop."

She signed her first lease in spring 2018. After a year and a half of buildout, Boichik Bagels opened its doors in Rockridge on Black Friday 2019. The name Boichik continues the family connection. The word boychik is Yiddish for "cute little boy," — a term of endearment Winston says came from her grandmother.

Winston said Fremont Bank first caught her attention because a branch was nearby and it “looked like a convenient bank” when she needed to get her business banking in place.

"It's a privilege to give Emily more than just banking products," says Alexis Kleinhans, Vice President, Commercial Banking Strategy & Execution at Fremont Bank. "We show up as her banking team — the people she can call on as her business grows and as her banking and borrowing needs change."

It was the beginning of a relationship that's grown alongside the business ever since, starting with a business checking account and a business line of credit. Winston was convinced enough to make it personal and moved her own banking to Fremont Bank.Photo of Emily Winston of Boichik Bagels and Alexis Kleinhans of Fremont Bank

Two back-to-back proof points

Just months after opening, COVID hit. Boichik adapted with a delivery program, mapping out the entire Bay Area by neighborhood and delivering on a rotating weekly schedule — South Bay on Thursdays, other regions throughout the week, all coordinated through scrappy, homegrown logistics software.

Then came the next proof point. The New York Times ran a story in 2021 featuring Boichik Bagels as one of the best bagels not just in the Bay, but in the country.

The response was immediate — and overwhelming.

Even with pandemic precautions in place, "the line often wrapped around the block, and people were waiting up to two hours," Winston says. "I thought everyone in the Bay Area already knew about us, but no — everyone read that piece and came running."

Demand surged, and Winston began considering how to grow the business without compromising the product that built her reputation in the first place.

Building to scale without compromise

The answer was a central factory that would enable those high-quality bakes to reach more people. Raising the capital to build it meant turning back to Fremont Bank, this time for a larger commitment.

"After we set up the original checking account, I needed to raise a lot of money to build the factory," Winston says. "That's when I took the line of credit with Fremont Bank, and we've been working with that since."

"I've worked with Emily throughout her rapid growth and expansion, making sure she has the right banking services in place for each stage," Kleinhans says. "Emily is an entrepreneur through and through. We love working with business people who run on passion and rely on knowledgeable professionals around them, like the team at Fremont Bank."

The Berkeley factory opened in March 2023, along with a Palo Alto location built at the same time. Today, the factory functions as the commissary for the entire Bay Area operation. Every batch of dough for every Boichik location is made there, then delivered daily to stores that boil and bake on site, while other locations receive bagels already baked and ready to sell.

Now, on an average day, roughly 15,000 bagels leave the facility.

From that single Rockridge storefront, Boichik has grown into a network of bakeries and cafes stretching across Berkeley, Palo Alto, Larkspur, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Los Gatos, and Concord, with wholesale accounts in cafes and supermarkets reaching as far as Sacramento and Santa Cruz.

Photo of Boichik Bagels in Berkeley, California

Schmearing the love beyond California

In 2025, Boichik expanded outside the Bay Area for the first time, opening two Los Angeles locations: one in Los Feliz and one in the historic Bradbury Building in Downtown LA, with a third underway. Winston is already looking ahead, including to the 2028 LA Olympics as an opportunity to bring Boichik to an even wider audience.

"I'm always coming up with a new idea — Let’s build something and test it," Winston says. "That's my idea of fun."

Emily’s ambitions for Boichik extend well beyond its current footprint. Winston and her team are working on menu expansion, building out a mobile kitchen for catering and event pop-ups, and growing the wholesale program into new states.

Most notably, she's considering a franchise model after fielding interest from people across the country who want to bring Boichik to their own communities.

"The long-range vision is to go global," Winston says. "I want to make great bagels available around the planet. Not like Starbucks, where there's one on every corner, but with a real global reach. I'm looking to set the stage for that and find the right partners to make it happen."

Through every phase of that growth, from a single checking account opened a block from her first store to the line of credit that helped build the Boichik factory, Fremont Bank has been part of the recipe of success.

It's proof that growth and craft don't have to be at odds. Scaling up, done right, doesn't mean you have to water down your product or vision. For Winston and for Fremont Bank, that's been the whole point.

Photo of Emily Winston of Boichik Bagels