This Is the Best City for Bagel Lovers

A recent analysis reveals that New York City is the best place in America for bagel lovers.

Published March 14, 2022, 7:30am ET · 2 min read

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A close-up shot of several fresh bagels piled loosely on white crinkled paper. Some bagels are topped with a generous amount of golden sesame seeds, while others feature a mix of dark poppy seeds and sesame seeds. The bagels have a golden-brown crust and a softer, lighter interior visible through their holes.
Freshly baked bagels, a staple often associated with simple pleasures, are now at the center of a rapidly growing consumer trend and significant investment. © littleny / iStock via Getty Images

The bagel, a baked, ring-shaped piece of bread, had its origins among the Jewish population of Poland, probably in the 13th century. Since then, it has become a favorite food of people around the world. In the United States, among the best-known bagels are those made in New York City, which might be called America’s bagel capital. Supermarket bagel sales topped $600 million a decade ago.

The recently released 2022’s Best Cities for Bagel Lovers list from lawn care provider Lawn Love is based on several metrics. The first is places serving bagels per square mile in each city considered. Others are the number of places serving bagels that get high consumer reviews and the volume of bagel searches in each city, according to Google. The primary sources for these data are Google Ads and TripAdvisor.

The study pointed out that bagels are not only simple circles of bread. Among the versions are those made with Apple pecan streusel, pumpkin spice, cheddar jalapeno or blueberries.

A review of bagel prices from New York Bagels, which ships its products overnight, reveals that a dozen bagels starts at $39.50. It also has packages priced at over $400.
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The Lawn Love study provides an index for the best bagel cities that has a maximum score of 100. It includes grades based on access to bagel shops and the quality and popularity of bagels. The analysis covers 158 cities.

New York City tops the list with an overall score of 87.74, much higher than second-place San Francisco, which had a score of 39.75. Boston and Washington follow. At the bottom of the list, with a score of 1.23, was Plano, Texas, the only city with a score below 2.0.

Click here to see all the best U.S. cities for bagel lovers.
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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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