New Product Lessons From NYC’s Best Salmon And Cream Cheese Bagel

ByMichelle Greenwald,

Contributor.

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese From Apollo Bagels in New York City

Richard Branson was always on the lookout for "stale" categories lacking in innovation so he could disrupt them by adding something unique or "special" and finding ways to better cater to underserved customers. Liquid Death is another case in point, that took a mature and unimaginative category, bottled water, and added an “out there”, made to go viral brand personality, and managed to achieve a $1.4 billion valuation in under 7 years. For months I passed Apollo Bagel at 7th Avenue and West 11th Street in New York City and wondered why the weekend lines were always so long for what seemed to be just another bagel shop. On a recent weekday when I passed and saw a short line, I thought I’d give it a try.

The bagels were utter perfection to my mind, taste buds and insidees, and a spell of satisfaction and euphoria took over. It was not like any bagel I’d had before. The New Products Marketing professor in me wondered how something so tried and true, that had been minimally varied for decades, could have found so many attribute points of difference to excel at, vs. all those that have gone before. Bagels were introduced to America by Eastern European Jews in the late 1800’s and went mainstream in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s ranging from very mediocre Lender’s frozen bagels you could find in a grocery store, to all manner of bagel shops proliferating throughout many large American cities.

A number factors make Apollo Bagels unparalleled. It’s a great example of how many features, attributes and dimensions go into a great product, that many competitors overlook. It’s also a lesson in the importance of doing a few things really, really well, and they don’t always need to be overcomplicated. Here are 9 examples of attention to details that make Apollo Bagels so exceptional:

The smoked white fish with sliced cucumber and dill is equally beautiful, simple, and delicious.

Smoked whitefish on a bagel with cucumbers and dill at Apollo Bagels, NYC

The marketing and new product development lessons from Apollo Bagels in New York City are that: