Grand Opening Offers Beer, Bagels, Buzz Saw

With construction complete on its 5,000 sq. foot flagship store at 14 JFK St., Finagle A Bagel will open its doors--and its ovens--today to bagel connoisseurs in the Square for its grand opening in a location once occupied by the Wursthaus restaurant.

The 140-seat eatery, which will also offer non-bagel options like hamburgers in addition to beer and wine on its lower level, hopes to give away more than 40,000 bagels today.

Today's opening reflects something of a coup for owners, who met resistance from the Harvard Square Defense Fund when they proposed to bring the store to the location.

According to company president and founder Larry Smith, the company had been hoping to open a Harvard Square location for as long as it had been in business.

But in order to move into the newly renovated building, next to recently opened clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, the company was forced to seek a zoning variance to sell "fast food." The Fund has traditionally been hesitant to support such requests.

To appease Fund members, the company's owners changed the focus of the establishment to combine both take-out and sit-down aspects.

And in the end, the Defense Fund decided not to oppose the store, allowing the company to begin construction on the eatery this fall.

And on Monday, despite boxes strewn around inside and no signs on the walls, Finagle A Bagel's Director of Marketing Heather Robertson said it was on track for a successful opening today.

She said last-minute finishing touches are all part of opening a business.

"Once we're ready to go, we don't want a lot of downtime," she said.

The store, despite looking like a more traditional bakery and cafe from the outside, will have a host at ground level to direct patrons either to the area where they can buy a bagel, or downstairs to order a sit-down meal from an expanded menu.

After ordering, customers can sit at a table and wait for their meal to be delivered by "food runners," a concept that company staffers have pitched as a quicker alternative to traditional waiter service.

The eatery will also offer free access to phone jacks for patrons to connect to the Internet.

In addition, the shop features a

Bagel Buzz Saw, a conveyor belt coupled with a fast spinning blade which flings hinge-cut bagels at high speed toward employees spreading cream cheese and making sandwiches.

The saw was created by Smith, the founder, after he saw an industrial slicer at a Las Vegas trade convention capable of slicing 12,000 bagels per hour. Smith, previously a mechanical engineer at General Electric, created his own toned-down version to be suitable for a store environment.

"With the Bagel Buzz Saw we have safety, efficiency, and the children love it," he said. "It's 'eatertainment,' as we call it in the industry."

This branch is also the only in the group of stores to have a full-time chef on staff, Herman Branco.

Branco acknowledged the challenge in making Finagle A Bagel into something more than a traditional bagel store.

"We're going to have some speed bumps," he said. "But part of the idea behind [the store] is creating a prototype."

Still, there are those who are not as happy with the store's presence in the Square.

"There's no such thing as a good bagel place unless it's independent from a chain," said Jim R. Griffin '01. "This is coming from someone who grew up in Brooklyn."

But Finagle a Bagel does not consider itself a chain.

"We are a local group of stores, not a chain," said Smith, who has been living in the Boston area for 25 years.

And to encourage locals to give Finagle A Bagel bagels a try, it has tried to use word-of-mouth advertising to get people excited about the product.

The store will employ 75 staffers and stay open from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. Monday through Friday and from 6:30 a.m. to 12 a.m. on the weekend.