Founder Emily Winston, an engineer, brought high-tech tools to her bagel factory to take away some of the heavy lifting.
October 1, 2024
BERKELEYSIDE — With an almost cult-like following, Boichik Bagels is more than a Bay Area household name. It’s also a high-tech manufacturing business.
If you think “high-tech” and “bagels” can’t go together, then you haven’t visited the Boichik’s shop and factory on Sixth Street in the Gilman District.
Boichik produces what a New York Times food critic called “some of the finest New York-style bagels I’ve ever tasted.” (Yes, in Berkeley, not New York!). Boichik makes over 12,000 bagels per day, along with Jewish delicacies like black and white cookies, challah and whitefish salad. These go out to its eight retail locations, as well as dozens of high-end grocery stores, all from the 18,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Berkeley.
Automation and, more recently, robotics have been critical to Boichik’s rapid growth, said Emily Winston, founder and CEO. When asked about the difference between automation and robotics, she explained that automation refers to “bagels going on conveyor belts in a straight line. It’s nothing new.”
But, she said, people’s bodies don’t work like conveyor belts. Their role in the production process is far more dynamic. What makes robotics exciting, Winston said, is that you can “integrate the automated equipment with the actions people need to take in the process.”
The recent introduction of robotics to the factory’s manufacturing floor makes Boichik, to Winston’s knowledge, “the most high-tech bagel line in the country.” And the really cool part for customers is that the process is fully visible through several large panes of glass.
A recent visit to the Boichik factory confirmed that an articulated robotic “arm” now features prominently at the end of the automated bagel production line. Customers watched earnestly as the robot set to work transferring boards of freshly shaped pumpernickel dough to a mobile pan rack for overnight fermentation (a step that Winston said is essential for malty, chewy, bagel-y goodness).
The idea of introducing the robot was all Winston’s. “No one had applied a robotic arm to this phase of production before,” she said. “This would be a miserable job. It is a total I-Love-Lucy-at-the-candy-factory situation. If you make one small mistake or miss a beat, you’ll get a pile-up. There’s also a lot of lifting and bending involved. Doing it repetitively is terrible.”
Winston received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. Prior to founding Boichik, she worked in the automotive sector, including as a studio engineer for General Motors, before she was tapped to run the Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicle program at UC Davis.
Winston has taken that engineer’s eye to optimizing everything bagel-related since she set out more than 10 years ago to recreate the cherished bagels she grew up with as part of a Jewish household in the New York area. Winston spent the better part of a decade refining her recipe, with only her memory to rely on — and the feedback of friends and family.
“How can I make a bagel as efficiently as possible while making it taste amazing?” is the question that drove her, Winston said. “I love machinery. I love robotics. It was only natural to think about how to apply these to my business. But, at the end of the day, I want my bagels to be the bagel I want to eat.”
Five years into her bagel-making journey, Winston had developed a following for her bagels, which she was still baking and selling out of her home kitchen. In 2019, she signed a lease for what would become the first Boichik Bagels retail outlet in the location of the original Noah’s Bagels in Berkeley on College near Alcatraz in the Elmwood District. “I wasn’t even really planning on a retail location, but I felt it was beshert [fate],” Winston said. “I couldn’t say no.”
“On our very first day, one of our first customers was this wonderful woman who had lived down the block from an old-school New York bagel shop, H&H Bagels,” Winston recalled. “She bit into the bagel and just went, ‘oh, yeah.’ That was when I finally felt like, ‘OK, I’ve actually done this thing I set out to do.’”
As Boichik has expanded its presence, its West Berkeley factory has played a pivotal role. And with plenty of factory floor space still available, Boichik is primed for its next stage of growth, which will include the addition of the company’s first two Los Angeles locations.
Winston said West Berkeley’s mixed use-light industrial zone area appealed to her because she wanted to have a retail component to her manufacturing facility.
“I’m big on transparency and wanted customers to be able to see how the bagels are made,” she said. “Plus, I really like the Gilman District. It’s industrial, but it also has breweries, wineries, art studios and people living a few blocks away. It has much more character and soul than an industrial park.”
As National Manufacturing Day 2024 (Oct. 4) approaches, Winston continues to nurture her beloved retail business from her home above her original College Avenue shop, and she lights up when she thinks about all the ways she can use technology to expand her business — possibly even nationwide — in the years ahead, all while leading the way on improving conditions for manufacturing workers.
Between its factory and retail shops, Boichik employs about 175 people.
“I have fantastically low turnover,” Winston stated proudly. “The purpose of automation is to make our jobs and our lives easier. Baking is a labor-intensive process. One of my goals is to take the repetitive stress injuries out of baking.”
WHAT NEXT
- Attend Berkeley Manufacturing Week 2024 tours (Oct. 4-10) or visit a local producer anytime using the Made in Berkeley map as a guide.
- Celebrate Boichik’s 5-year anniversary on Black Friday (Nov. 29) at 9 a.m. at the West Berkeley factory at a networking event hosted by the Berkeley Chamber.
- Visit the Discovered in Berkeley Stories page to find more articles about innovative local businesses.
