Banking on Bagels

Zachary Fall and Bryana Yukniewicz are some of the most recent residents of the Platte Valley, having moved here in January. In less than a year, however, the two have found that the best way to a community’s heart is through its stomach.

Zach and Bryana are the couple behind Bagels & Badges, a small business which started earlier this year and rapidly increased its revenue tenfold.

“They’ve exploded pretty quickly,” said Bryana. “We started in March with our first sale to someone from the jail and that month we had, maybe, $200 or $300. Now, we’re averaging almost $3,000 a month.”

To truly understand how Bagels & Badges got started, one has to go back a few years. Bryana is a former law enforcement officer and Zach is a deputy with the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office. Before the two moved to Wyoming, they lived in West Tennessee and, before that, they lived in Florida. Bryana, however, is originally from New Jersey.

“We had good bagels there,” said Bryana. “Then, when we moved to Florida, there were no good bagels. Then we moved to Tennessee and moved here and I just couldn’t find what satisfied the [craving for a] New Jersey bagel. I was like ‘I need to start making them for myself, then.’”

Bryana’s bagel baking began about three years ago, when the couple still lived in Florida and she continued baking them in Tennessee and Wyoming. The two made the decision to move to the state to be closer to Zach’s mother, who works for the Carbon County Jail, when Bryana became pregnant. Prior to this, they had spent one year as law enforcement officers in Tennessee and seven years in Florida.

Closer to family, Zach’s mom began taking Bryana’s bagels into work.

“His mom would take some to work and the ladies she’s friends with would take some to work. They’d start sharing it with people and next thing you know, we started getting orders,” said Bryana. “It just took off from there.”

Around the time of their first sale, Zach and Bryana applied to enter the second Carbon County Startup Challenge.

“We tied for first place and we won some money and we bought a food truck,” said Bryana. “We’re currently working on that, but that’s how everything unfolded.”

As they work on their food truck, Bagels & Badges makes its rounds through the local farmers markets in Carbon County. Starting up the business and selling bagels has been a learning experience for Bryana. For example, baking from her home brings with it some limitations.

“We’ve been in touch with the health inspector throughout this entire process just to make sure we’re doing everything correctly. What we found is, in the state of Wyoming, you can bake out of your home but they have to be sold as individual packages. At the markets, I can’t open the package and put cream cheese on them and sell them,” said Bryana. “If I was baking out of a commercial kitchen or the food truck, I could have a whole setup and I could be making sandwiches and selling them like that.”

That doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for people who have become fans of Bagels & Badges, with their sales increasing over the past several months and continuing to climb.

“Definitely a higher volume and going into winter it seems like there’s been even more,” said Zach.

Bryana has also learned that it takes more time to bake for the markets than for her family.

“If I was making one or two batches for the family, it wouldn’t take me very long,” said Bryana. “When I’m baking for markets, I’m making hundreds of bagels and that takes me literally all day.”

Bagels & Badges began with the Everything Bagel, said Bryana, but she now has two popular flavors which are often competing to her best sellers.

“It started with our garlic parmesan bagel. It’s stuffed with cream cheese, garlic, parmesan cheese and parsley and butter drizzled on it. That was our top seller. Recently, probably within the last two months, we came out with the pizza-stuffed bagel,” said Bryana. “That one’s stuffed with mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, parmesan cheese, fresh basil from Brush Creek [Ranch] and butter. Those two are neck-and-neck right now.”

Along with bagels, Zach and Bryana are beginning to expand into other baked goods. Their primary focus is with sourdough.

“We started with the muffins and then we started making sourdough cheese crackers. I have a few things on my list that I want to expand but it’s really just me at this point,” said Bryana. “He [Zach] helps with markets, but I’m the one baking. When I have time, I like to experiment with other sourdough things we do want to offer.”

So what do Zach and Bryana do when they’re not baking bagels, selling bagels or working?

“We like being outdoors. There’s so many things to do, there’s tons of events we’ve seen even in just the short year we’ve been here,” said Bryana. “We love that there’s constantly markets and there’s something just about every weekend. We do a lot of hiking and day camping and camping.”

“There’s always something going on, which is awesome,” added Zach.

Because of their background—and current employment—in law enforcement, Bagels & Badges has made it a goal to donate a portion of their proceeds to help local first responders.

“This year, we found that the [Carbon County] Sheriff’s Office had a certain need—that need was helmets for their search and rescue team—so we donated two helmets from the proceeds of what we made throughout the year to their search and rescue team,” said Bryana. “Next year, we’ll find a local first responder group and see what their needs are and we’ll help them to the best of our ability with our small business.”