Entertainment

'Shark Tank's Bantam Bagels Are Worth the Price

by Ariel Kay

The bagel is basically New York City's official food, rivaled only by pizza. (Please don't ever make me choose between these two delicious things.) It's the perfect snack: crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside, able to be made in hundreds of different flavors. Really, it's an injustice that people who don't live in the New York area can't get a decent bagel. The founders of Bantam Bagel, a company appearing on Shark Tank this week, have set out to fix that problem, and feed people some good food along with way.

Bantam Bagel, located in the West Village, is a restaurant that specializes in making ball-shaped mini bagels, instead of the normal O-shaped variety. Each ball is stuffed with a delicious filling — some cream cheese, some sweet, some savory. It's enough to make my mouth water just thinking about it. Bantam isn't going on Shark Tank just to get some cash for their New York location. Rather, they want to expand their mail-order business, so that people around the world can experience a true New York delicacy. Give these people a Nobel already! Want to see Shark Tank's latest contender in action? Let's take a look.

Do not watch this episode on an empty stomach! So besides how delicious their products seem, what else do you need to know about Bantam Bagels?

They're Endorsed by Oprah

Seriously, once you've got Oprah on board, the rest of us have no choice but to follow, right? Oprah included Bantam Bagels in her Favorite Things of 2014. The company's tongue-in-cheek advertising has been using the endorsement to promote selfies with (a picture of) Oprah in their shop and the hashtag #OprahsBallin on Twitter.

And by One Shark Already

As you can see, QVC has already started shilling Bantam Bagels, even before the product made it to Shark Tank. And who's the Queen of QVC? Shark Lori Greiner, of course. Is this a spoiler that Bantam does indeed get a deal? We'll have to wait until the episode airs to know for sure, but it's certainly a positive sign to see one of the Sharks' own brands endorsing the company.

So How Do You Get Your Own Bantam Bagel?

If you don't live in New York, don't give up hope of enjoying the perfect mini-bagel. You can order them online! A sampler pack comes with 36 bagels in six different flavors for $35.95, or about $1 per bagel, plus shipping. Because Bantam wants to ensure their product tastes as good in your house as it does in their shop, they ship the variety pack frozen with five pounds of dry ice. That means your bagel will taste fresh and delicious when it gets to you, but it also makes shipping quite expensive. Right now, you can only order the variety pack in one size, but since they keep so long you can savor them for weeks or months.

Hopefully with the help of the Sharks, Bantam will be expanding soon, and that means more bagels for all of us. Now I need a snack.

Images: Bantam Bagels/Instagram; Giphy