Proof of concept
Gross margin is not net profit and excludes rent, royalties, marketing, insurance and debt service. One outlet is not a system average. The Franklin shop opened in November 2025 and has no full-year data. See Item 19 of the 2026 FDD for the complete tables.
BrandingIt started as an insult. Jake set his first perfected batch on a napkin and Jeff looked at the oddly shaped, deeply delicious thing in front of him and said it was the ugliest bagel he had ever seen. They laughed, then realized they had just named the company. Great brands are memorable and carry a hidden message - look closely at the mark and you'll find the smile.
CultureThe bagels aren't perfect, the brand isn't perfect, and the crew isn't perfect. Three things are non-negotiable: give effort, give energy, spread joy. That welcoming posture widens the guest base instead of narrowing it, and it makes hiring easier in a category defined by turnover.
ProductFresh, never-frozen dough made with barley malt and high-gluten flour undergoes a 12–18 hour cold ferment before each bagel is hand-rolled, boiled, and baked. Fourteen bagel and schmear flavors are available each month, alongside four butters and nine sandwiches. The plain and everything remain the foundation: get the basics right and the fun flavors follow.
OperationsFive or six ingredients. A programmed water doser delivers the exact volume at the exact temperature, so the recipe can't drift. No baking background is required - Jake's 11-year-old daughter was keeping pace rolling bagels within thirty minutes. If a crew member can read a scale, they can make the product to standard.
Service modelEvery shop is 100% digital ordering, and every shop staffs a trained host three to five feet from the kiosk. Most kiosk brands use the technology to cut labor and avoid guests. Ugly Bagel uses it to free a person up to read the room, walk a hesitant guest through their first order, and set the tone. Old world process, new world technology.
MarketingA limited flavor lands on the first of the month and disappears at the end - Pizza bagel with Buffalo cream cheese, Chocolate covered cherry, whatever the founders build next. Revealed on social first, developed centrally, executed by your team. It is a new-customer acquisition engine that runs twelve times a year without you inventing anything.
RevenueBagels and spreads, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, coffee and beverages, and catering - plus supplemental retail merchandise, and the branded app, website, kiosk, and third-party delivery all feeding the same kitchen. Competitors that skip coffee and sandwiches leave a meaningful part of the ticket on the table.
FrequencyThe newer bagel names require three-bagel minimums, no toasting, no sandwiches and thin coffee. That's an Instagram post, not a Tuesday morning. Ugly Bagel is built for the guest who comes back three times a week - one downtown regular has placed more than 200 orders through the app.
LeadershipJeff Crabiel spent two decades in upper-upscale hotels, finishing as chief hospitality officer of a Nashville family office. Jake Strang trained at Johnson & Wales and opened Pinehurst, the Schermerhorn, the Hutton and the Westin as a chef. This is not a first rodeo dressed up as a franchise - it's twenty years of opening and systemizing hospitality businesses, applied to bagels.
SupportBacked by a Nashville development office, Ugly Bagel was built with a CFO, a CMO, and an in-house construction manager before the first franchise was ever sold. Construction, branding, and operations are run at a corporate standard, and franchise owners can hire that same construction management team to build their shop.
The founders
"QSR is one of the most soulless pieces of food and beverage in the industry. It doesn't need to be that way."
Small-town Michigan, son of two teachers. Twenty years in Orlando and Nashville hotels, ending as chief hospitality officer of a Nashville family office. He believes the person taking out the trash matters as much as the general manager, and he built Ugly Bagel so that a quick-service shop could still feel like real hospitality.
"If our plain bagel and our everything bagel aren't solid, none of the fun flavors matter. People won't come back."
Johnson & Wales trained, six years at Pinehurst, then opening chef roles at the Schermerhorn, the Hutton and the Westin in Nashville. He spent more than a year of nights in his home kitchen tweaking one recipe until New Yorkers stopped arguing with it.
Farmers’ markets first, then a hotel cafe where the bagels became the number one selling item inside a week. Only then did the first shop open downtown in November 2024.
A Nashville development partner came in as a minority investor with one condition: build something with the ambition of the biggest names in coffee. That gave the brand a CFO, a CMO and a construction team years before franchising.
A downtown flagship, a Full Model with a commissary kitchen and retail storefront, and a shop that operates with no kitchen at all. Every model in the franchise offering is one the founders operate themselves today.
We compare ourselves to great hotels, not to fast food. The founders staff to the experience rather than to the lowest possible labor line, and they will tell candidates plainly that chasing a 25-30% margin by cutting service or ingredients is the fastest way to break the brand.
Language stays natural to the local team - no scripts. Tattoos, piercings and colored hair are welcome. Everybody should feel able to walk through the door and belong.
Instagram and TikTok are run centrally so the brand stays intact as the system grows. The menu boards are controlled from corporate. Consistency is not a nice-to-have; it is the asset you are buying.
Proudly a Nashville bagel, not a New York impersonation. The process is traditional; the attitude is entirely ours.
The right fit
People who want to put a smile on faces in the community they actually live in, and who see a shop as an experience to run rather than a line item to squeeze.
Owners who build the business on hospitality and consistency rather than cutting service, staffing, or quality. Anyone whose plan depends on trimming what makes the brand work is the wrong fit.
The economics get better with a central kitchen feeding non-kitchen satellites, so developers committing to three to five shops are the priority.
In the founders' words: if you look at the glass as half empty, this probably isn't the brand for you.
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