The Bear's Share

How a meteoric rise in popularity for local concept Bears Bagels landed plenty of pop-ups, and a pizza bagel collaboration

By Melinda Green / Photos by Aaron Massey / Story Design by Atlas Biro

This April 20, keep an eye out for Bears Bagels: They’ll have some tasty surprises up their sleeve to celebrate 420 Day. And, through the entire month of April, they’re collaborating with another local favorite to bring Columbus a delicious, grown-up spin on a popular kids’ lunch.

But wait—Bears Bagels has come out of nowhere fast. How did all of this happen?

Co-owner Charis Yost is still reeling a little from the quick rise to popularity.

“I’ve been in the [restaurant] industry for fifteen years,” said the former General Manager of 101 Beer Kitchen. “I’ve done pretty much everything in front of house and kitchen, except for Executive Chef.

Pizza Bagels, Bear's Bagels

“If you had asked me at the beginning of 2022, if I’d be leaving at the end of that year and starting my own business, my mindset was ‘I’m a lifer, or at least a long-term 101 employee.’ I saw myself having a very linear path there. But, you know—life happens.”

Yes, life happens—and his back of house experience didn’t extend to baking.

He recalled, “My first dive into anything, baking-wise, was during the pandemic, when I was furloughed and bored as all get-out and decided to get some flour and yeast at Aldi. Like everyone else, [I was] making breads and stuff.”

"I started...workshopping my own recipe to get what I wanted out of a bagel—something Columbus didn't have."

Although his wife and Bears Bagels co-owner, Lo Yost, is a pastry chef, she doesn’t work with yeasted breads and couldn’t help him. As a result, “Bagels were one of the things that I failed miserably at,” Yost said.

“My wife wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. She actually got me a bagel cookbook as a gag gift in 2021 for Christmas. So, after I got that, I made it my mission in 2022 to be able to make a good bagel.

“That’s when I kind of opened up Pandora’s Box, went down the rabbit hole, whatever metaphor you want. I kind of sunk my teeth into it, read that book front to back, and got good at that, and then I started looking into online recipes, what’s the difference between a Montreal bagel and a New York bagel, and workshopping my own recipe to get what I wanted out of a bagel—something Columbus didn’t have.”

Around Memorial Day, Lo finally gave Charis the nod of approval. “It was the first affirmation I was doing something right,” he recalled.

Charis Yost in the kitchen

Then, she said “You should start selling these.”

“It went from her harassing me and telling me I was terrible, to her telling me that I could probably sell them,” he recalled, laughing.

The Yosts did flash sales throughout the summer and had pickup times at their house. Charis was still at 101 Beer Kitchen, making bagels about once a week when he had a bit of free time. And the bagels became really popular really quickly.

“Here in Columbus, the experience you’ll get is not anywhere near what you’d get in Philadelphia or New York,” he said. And, on the city’s West side suburbs where the Yosts live, there are none of the “mom & pop” shops that Yost considers the outlet for a really good bagel. All of the factors pointed in one direction.

"It went from her...telling me I was terrible, to her telling me I could probably sell them."

Last October, he and Lo made the decision that he would go full-bore into bagels, leaving his position at 101 Beer Kitchen and focusing on coffee shops and farmers’ markets until Bears Bagels can eventually build a brick-and-mortar shop. (In the meantime, they’re using the kitchen of another local dining establishment to make their bagels.)

614 Magazine reached out to Yost for an interview the Tuesday of his first week in his new business. The headline of the article asked the question, is this the next Wizard of Za?

That’s a heavy question, and it led Eric Rosenberg, co-owner of Fusian and Wizard of Za, to try Yost’s bagels. The two struck up a conversation on Yost’s front porch, and Rosenberg dangled a tasty suggestion: Since Bears Bagels had already been compared to Wizard of Za, maybe the two should collaborate someday.

“I was like ‘Yeah, that would be great, ha-ha-ha!’ and threw it to the side like ‘They wouldn’t wanna do something with us; we’re so young,’” Yost recalled.

But, in January 2023, Rosenberg reached back out to see if Yost still had interest.

It started with a concept of pizza bagels all through the month of April at Wizard of Za in Clintonville. Since Wizard uses sesame seed in their pans, the pair decided to use Bears’ sesame seed bagel as the base for this collaboration. The rest is just as simple: Open face pizza bagels with classic cheese and pepperoni (or whatever you want to add), along with Wizard’s signature Sproccoli and Pesto Rosso approaches.

Charis and Lo Yost, holding an assorted bagel bag

As the ideas flowed, they had another thought: Maybe they should also do a collaboration focused around 420 Day, and have a little fun with the counterculture celebration of marijuana.

"I was like...'They wouldn't wanna do something with us; we're so young.'"

Although they won’t say what surprises they’re planning (and the surprises will be legal, of course), there definitely will be celebratory shenanigans in Fusian’s parking lot on April 20th from 4:20 until 8:00pm.

Throughout this process, Yost has learned to become comfortable with being uncomfortable as Bears Bagels grows by leaps and bounds. If you think about it, business might be a lot like baking.

“You think it’s just following a recipe to the T, but it’s also a little bit of flex and feel and flow to it, depending on the amount that you’re baking, the temperature and humidity, the water temperature,” he noted. “There’s a lot of variables that go into it that I’ve started to realize kind of have the element of art, contrasted to the science of it. That’s the fun part of it.”

Follow Bears Bagels on Facebook and Instagram (@bearsbagels614) to keep up with their April activities.