Tribeca's Bagel Wars: How Every New Shop Is Betting on a Different Bagel

"That's a lotta carbs!" a Tribeca Citizen reader wrote in September, after the paper reported that Ess-a-Bagel had taken a storefront on Murray Street. He counted ahead to the day it opens. "After Ess opens, I think that every block on Church Street from Park Place to Duane Street will have a bagel outlet (Dunkin, Ess, Dunkin, Nala's, Dunkin again, Modern)." He also pointed out that all this competition had done nothing to lower the price of a bagel with a schmear.

His count is right. A closer look at the shops that opened between February and September shows something else, though. They are not offering the same product, and the newcomers are not really fighting over the same customer. One is a sit-down cafe, one is a bundle counter with no counter to lean on, one serves people who can't eat gluten, and one is a sandwich operation with a fifty-year-old name. Taken together, the bagel wars look more like each shop claiming its own patch of the morning.

The Sourdough Cafe at Reade and Hudson

Start with the corner that sat dark the longest. Kings, the pharmacy and general-goods shop Al Solman opened at 121 Reade in 1998, closed on June 30, 2023, after 25 years. Partner Jones Chan blamed rising merchandise costs, staffing and wages, and rent, and an effort to find a smaller space nearby didn't work out. Tribeca Citizen reported in April 2025 that Apollo Bagels had leased the space.

Apollo has turned the old drugstore into a roomy cafe, with booths along the Bogardus Plaza side. The menu is short on purpose. There are three bagel flavors, plain, sesame and everything, and the everything is made without salt. There are about six prepared options and a house-bottled ginger lemonade. The bagels are sourdough: crisp outside, open and spongy inside, lighter than the usual New York bagel and large enough that Tribeca Citizen's reviewer recommended slicing rather than tearing. They are still boiled and baked on site at every location. The shop opens at 7 a.m. seven days a week.

Co-founder Joey Scalabrino grew up in Soho. He started the bagels as a pop-up at the soup kiosk at Fanelli, opened the first stand-alone shop in the East Village in early 2024, and now runs nine locations with partners Kevin Rezvani, Jose Jimenez and Melvin Gonzalez. In its 2024 ranking of the city's best bagels, The New York Times put Apollo at the top of the list. "We are super grateful to be here," Scalabrino told Tribeca Citizen. "We will try to do right by Kings."

The plaza is part of what Apollo took on. After the Friends of Bogardus Plaza raised concerns about litter, the shop added two trash cans to the plaza and agreed to help with maintenance costs. A bagel cafe with booths fronting a public plaza works differently from a takeout window, and that agreement reflects it.

A Bagel Shop With Nowhere to Stand

Two blocks west, PopUp Bagels at 315 Greenwich at Reade does almost the opposite. Its plans slipped more than once. Eater NY's March 2025 preview expected it that summer, Tribeca Citizen later reported a November target, and it finally opened in February 2026. It was the company's 25th location. Founder Adam Goldberg started PopUp in Westport, Connecticut, in 2020.

You can't order a single bagel here. You buy three or six bagels with one 8-ounce schmear, or a dozen with two. Three bagels and a schmear cost $13. The schmears rotate weekly. Opening week brought plain, scallion and lemon pepper cream cheese, a salted butter, and what looked like a cake-batter butter with sprinkles. There is no seating and no counter. The shop takes preorders and sells a brunch pack for 18, with whitefish salad or smoked salmon, for $130. It runs daily from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Apollo and PopUp are a two-minute walk apart and hardly compete. One is built around a table and the other around the kitchen table at home.

Gluten-Free, in a Hotel Lobby

The newest of the three opened on Church Street in early September. Modern Bread & Bagel, the gluten- and nut-free bakery founded by Orly Gottesman, first announced its Church and Duane plans in April 2025. It now sits at 130 Duane, inside the former Duane Street Hotel, which now operates as the Duane Hotel. The shop isn't walled off from the lobby. It spills into it, and there are a few seats at the southern end. The menu reaches well past bagels, with sandwiches, open-faced melts, a separate egg-sandwich list, salads, spreads, smoked fish, signature lattes and packaged gluten-free cake mixes. Tribeca Citizen's writer said her household had already been making trips to the 14th Street location for the bagels.

So Modern isn't competing with Apollo on crust. It serves customers that a conventional bagel shop can't serve at all.

A Fifty-Year-Old Name on Murray Street

Ess-a-Bagel is the shop that set off that count. The family institution has a storefront on Murray between Broadway and Church, and WhatNow gives the address as 10 Murray. As of September 21, no opening date had been announced. Florence and Gene Wilpon founded the first bakery with Florence's brother, Aaron Wenzelberg, who came from an Austrian baking family. After Florence died in 2013, her sister Muriel and niece Melanie took over.

The FiDi shop at 115 Broadway and Thames gives the best preview. It serves a wide range of specialty sandwiches and has no real seating, just window spots to lean in. Its BLTA was listed at $11.80. That makes it a sandwich counter first. Apollo is a cafe, PopUp a bundle shop, Modern a dietary specialist. Ess fills the one slot the others have left open.

Here is how the four newcomers line up:

• Apollo Bagels, 121 Reade at Hudson. A sit-down cafe with booths and a three-flavor sourdough menu.
• PopUp Bagels, 315 Greenwich at Reade. Bundles of three, six or twelve, rotating schmears, no seating.
• Modern Bread & Bagel, 130 Duane at Church. Gluten- and nut-free, with a full sandwich and egg menu.
• Ess-a-Bagel, 10 Murray. A long specialty-sandwich list, based on the FiDi model. Opening date not yet announced.

The Shops That Were Already Here

None of this started from scratch. Tribeca Citizen's rundown of what it calls "the OGs" lists Zucker's, which moved to a new space on Chambers in 2023; Pick-A-Bagel, a longtime tenant of the Goldman Breezeway; Brooklyn Bread at Greenwich and Murray; Tribeca Bagels on Canal; and Black Seed at Hudson Eats in Brookfield Place. The newcomers are moving into a neighborhood that already had a classic deli, an office-corridor counter and a food-hall stand. That helps explain why each one arrived with a specific format instead of a general one.

Not every opening has held. Nala's Bagel & Brunch opened at 63 Reade on October 3, 2024. It later moved into the former Tribeca Rogue space at 146 Church, on the southwest corner of Chambers, as Nala's Bagel & Ice Cream. In mid-July, Tribeca Citizen reported the Church Street shop closed, with a Health Department notice dated June 24 on the door, and asked whether the closure might be temporary. The Nala's in that Church Street list may or may not be serving when you walk by.

Meanwhile, the Juice Counters Reshuffled

The bagel shops opened during the same summer that several of Tribeca's grab-and-go morning counters closed. Pret A Manger at 100 Church and Park Place, open since 2011, closed in late June. Joe & The Juice closed its longtime shop at 295 Greenwich on July 31. In August, Tribeca Citizen reported it would reopen in the former Pret space on Church. Juice Press at 415 Greenwich and Laight had closed by early August.

That leaves one juice chain moving rather than leaving, one gone from Greenwich, and a sandwich chain's corner turning into a juice bar. Over the same months, the neighborhood gained a sourdough cafe, a bundle shop and a gluten-free bakery. The early-morning storefronts are turning over in step, and the bagel shops have taken more of them than anyone else.

Still on the Way

Two arrivals are pending. Ess-a-Bagel on Murray has no announced date. Tompkins Square Bagels, which opened on Avenue A in 2011 and has four other locations in the city, is coming to the Independence Plaza retail space at Greenwich and Franklin. Tribeca Citizen first reported the plan in August 2025. Owner Christopher Pugliese got his start at 15 at Bake City Bagels in Gravesend, Brooklyn. As of the paper's September 17 rundown, the shop was listed as coming, with the company "hoping for spring" and no confirmed date.

When both open, the Greenwich and Franklin end of the neighborhood will get a bagel shop of its own, and Murray Street will have Ess-a-Bagel's sandwich counter a few doors off Church.

Ground-floor tenants like these are among the clearest signals a block sends about how it is changing, and which use takes a vacant corner affects the building above it. If you own a building with a Tribeca storefront and want a technical read on how this year's turnover affects its value, Brennan Global Properties is glad to talk it through. Schedule a private consultation.