How Shelly Fireman Built An Empire Out Of Bagels

In 1963, Shelly Fireman opened a bagel joint in Greenwich Village called the Hip Bagel for $500. Up until then, most people probably didn’t think of bagels as hip on the food chain, but Fireman thought otherwise. “It was such a tiny place, it was a closet. It was more or less, already built,” he says. “The kitchen was already in there.”

At first he didn’t have enough money to pay to have chairs delivered in time for the opening. “So for the first few days I used wooden orange crates and people loved that,” he says. “They thought it was so hip.”

He also put down the linoleum himself. “And since I had my father's cutting tools, I cut the felt for the walls myself too. Yellow and green felt,” says Fireman. With the help a recent young architecture school graduate they seriously dolled up the Hip Bagel. “It looked smarter and cleaner than most of the beatnik places in Greenwich Village at the time,” recalls Fireman.
Gifted with marketing savvy, he got out the word by using smarts, “instead of a lot of cash,” he explains. Back then SoHo was filled with factories where you could buy anything. Fireman got a hold of classic Tiffany Boxes and filled them each with colorful tissue paper and one bagel. “That was it,” he explains. “No other text. No “Hip Bagel restaurant” logo. No “Shelly Fireman.” Nothing. Just a bagel in a box."

For five straight days he had these Tiffany boxes with single bagels in them hand-delivered to different radio DJ's. “Who the heck has been sending me all these bagels?,” shouted Mort Fega, a very popular jazz DJ. "When he found out it was me, he came to the Hip Bagel, became a friend, and for the next three years he talked about us every evening on the radio. And that brought in everyone on the jazz world,” says Fireman. “So we got free advertising And that only cost me a box, a bagel, and a messenger."

But it wasn't just marketing that set Hip Bagels apart. Back then as Fireman explains, bagels were made below ground because everything was run by hand. So they boiled the bagels. “It was a very manual labor intensive job. Shirts were off,” says Fireman. “Bagel makers were like coal miners. And just like mining for coal, or drilling for oil, they were generating valuable raw material from below ground. Once someone took oil and took it out of the ground, they knew they would have a hit. It was the same with me and bagels.”

Fireman knew that once he elevated bagels from basements and put them in glass boxes, it would give people the sense that it was bigger than strictly a neighborhood thing. “It was so obvious to me,” he says. He then added a touch of Italian food to the bagels, which was hugely popular at the time. “I knew we would have a hit. It was all just so obvious to me.”

In fact Hip Bagel lived up to its name. The place which lasted almost 20 years was frequented by Barbra Streisand, Lenny Bruce, Benny Goodman, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Shel Silverstein, Andy Warhol, Rothko, the Mama's and the Papa's and the group Peter, Paul, and Mary. “I could go on,” says Fireman.

So devoted to the quality of the food he serves, when he decided to have Italian food on top of the bagels, he visited the sausage factory on Houston Street, which they planed to employ. “Once I got there I thought: if my mother ever saw this, she would be appalled,” says Fireman. “Such schmutz everywhere.” So instead of buying pre-made sausages from the factory he paid a guy fifty dollars to teach him how to make Italian sausage himself. “Then we could make them fresh in-house every day, and do the right thing for the guests,” says Fireman. “And so my mother would be proud and not flinch.” Another draw was his mother's homemade jello-O. “She made best Jell-O in the world with nuts and fruits and raisins. She would make it in the Bronx, schlep it down on the D-Train and bring it to me twice a week, in big pans. And I called it “Grandma Hipstein's Jell-O." And people loved it.”

Not only was Hip Bagel a hit, it also set in motion Fireman's decades long career as a beloved restauranteur, which continues today. In New York City where restaurants die quickly, through The Fireman Hospitality Group he has eight restaurants - seven in New York City and one in National Harbor, Maryland, including Bond 45, Cafe Fiorello, Brooklyn Diner, Redeye Grill and Trattoria Dell'Arte. Many of which have been open for decades.

Fireman claims the secret to his success is making everyone feel special. That's why in every restaurant he has a candy dish out front and a wall carving of his parents' names. “It's all about the way my parents made my friends feel welcome every time they would come by our house,” says Fireman who is an accomplished sculptor and features his art in his restaurants. “Whether you are a big shot celebrity or not, I want you to feel welcome. That is just how I was raised.”

Redeye Grill