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Today, we're heating up the delicious history of Bagel Bites
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Bagel Bites were officially invented in 1985 by tennis partners Bob Mosier and Stanley Garzinski
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of Fort Myers, Florida. But according to Garzinski, it was really more like a team effort between the
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and their respective wives. Mosher was in the catering business, and one night while at a party with Gershynski
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and their significant others, he complained that it was hard to find things kids liked to eat
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Someone, no one remembers who, observed, the only thing kids really like is pizza
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This truism would echo throughout the 80s and 90s. From there, the conversation evolved
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to coming up with some sort of pizza-related hors d'oeuvre for children. Someone came up with the idea of using bagels
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Someone else suggested the name Bagel Bites, And that's how the single most important conversation in the history of frozen snack foods took place
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The two invested $20,000 into the company, rented a 2,000-square-foot warehouse in Fort Myers
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and focused all their efforts on getting their frozen snack business off the ground
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According to Garzinski, he and Moser made all the original bagel bites by hand on an assembly line
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The bagels would be dumped out and a little cylinder would then pump some sauce onto them Cheese would be sprinkled on top and then it would go into the freezer until it was time to be shipped The strategy paid off and they sold Bagel Bites by the bag full making their first big
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sales to price clubs like Sands Club, BJ's, Macro, and Costco. Gershynski would later recall that they made half a million dollars in their first year
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and just a few years later, they were raking in 10 million. After that, big brands started hounding them to sell
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They held out until 1987, when they sold the company to John Labatt Company
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And in 1991, Heinz bought a large portion of John Labatt Company
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In 2000, Bagel Bites joined AT&T, Nike, Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, and Volkswagen to sponsor ESPN's 2000 Winter X Games
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They recruited a special spokesman for the occasion, Tony Hawk. Long story short, his endorsement generated an extreme boost in sales
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After 13 weeks of advertising with the Birdman, the company saw a 26% increase in consumption
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In the following year, Bagel Bites experienced an astounding 32% increase in sales
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According to a survey of over 28,000 homes, 1.24% of U.S. households devour five or more
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packs of Bagel Bites over the course of 30 days. In other words, roughly 350 of the homes surveyed were burning through five or more boxes of
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bagel bites a month. How could anyone possibly eat so many bagel bites, you ask? We assume they
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must be eating pizza in the morning, in the evening, and at suppertime
