Boichik’s massive Berkeley bagel plant, cafe and retail store opens today

A year and a half in the making, Emily Winston’s mega bagel facility with the custom bagel-slinging robot arm is opening at 7:30 a.m. today, March 24, in Berkeley, where Boichik Bagels fans will no doubt wait in long lines to catch a glimpse of BakerBot and nibble on Pumperthingles. The new Boichik Bagels will be open until 1 p.m. daily, or until sold out.

As we’ve been reporting since 2021, the 18,000-square-foot warehouse and mechanical dough line was designed by Winston, a mechanical engineer by training, to fuel Boichik’s growing mini-empire. The plant will serve as the production facility for Boichik’s wholesale accounts, the tiny College Avenue and Palo Alto shops and forthcoming bagel outposts, including Santa Clara. The new Boichik offers a similar menu to the other locations — bagels sandwiches, house-mixed schmears, lox, whitefish salad and coffee — in addition to some new baked goods.

Chocolate-laced matzo bark will be available in time for Passover, and soon after, you’ll find house-baked black and white cookies and triple chocolate coffee cake, inspired by Winston’s childhood memories of Entenmann’s, in the pastry case.

“It’s such a great feeling to envision something and watch it come to life,” Winston said on Thursday. Winston worked for General Motors for two years before she moved to the Bay Area and began making bagels out of her Oakland home. The three-part mechanical dough line starts with an Italian mixer and dough lift, named Thor, which lifts and dumps bagel dough into a large hopper. That hopper is the entrance to BakTek, which was designed in collaboration with the Livermore baking equipment manufacturer.

As Winston explained, BakTek takes the giant piece of dough and rolls it into a snake and squeezes out bagel shapes — 24 each time — onto a wooden proof board. BakerBot is the robot arm that transfers those 24 bagels onto a rack. The whole set up allows the crew to produce 12,000 bagels an hour, which is 10 times Boichik’s previous production, Winston said.

“It’s so cool to take a step back and say ‘I designed this and now it’s here and it works and it runs,’” said Winston, who raised more than $1 million via SMBX to bring the project to life.

The highly-anticipated bagel destination — it’s made our Most Anticipated Restaurants list more than once — offers 15 types of New York-style bagels, from classics like onion and cinnamon raisin to Winston’s signatures, like Eggything (egg + everything bagel) and that flavorful Pumperthingle (pumpernickle + everything). Unique cream cheeses flavors include a horseradish flecked with scallions and cheddar and a pickled fennel cream cheese with preserved lemon.

Oakland’s Mother Tongue Coffee will supply both the drip and the chocolate malted ice coffee. And for decaf, there’s the classic.

“We’ve got Sanka and  Sweet’N Low and all of your Jewish grandma needs,” Winston said.

Another thing Boichik Bagels Sixth Street will have? Seating. Winston’s addition of indoor and outdoor patio tables for 40 people, something lacking due to space at the original College Avenue shop, will allow her to host bridge, mahjong and chess players, she said.