National Bagel Day Facts

Bagels in Philadelphia

In Philadelphia, the top five flavors of grocery store bagels include plain, everything, cinnamon raisin, blueberry & cinnamon.

National Bagel Data

*Source IRI - based on bagel packages sold/purchased in 2020 through 11/22/2020

• Top five cities for grocery store bagel consumption: Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore/Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago
• The top five flavors for grocery store bagels nationwide: Plain, Everything, Cinnamon Raisin, Blueberry, and Cinnamon
• Thomas’ top five most popular bagel flavors nationwide: Full-size varieties of Plain, Everything, Cinnamon Raisin, Blueberry, and Cinnamon

The History of the Bagel

• In 2020, more than 356 million packages of bagels were sold at grocery stores across the country.
• In 2020, more than 198 million Thomas’ bagel packages were sold. 
• Bagels saw the second-highest year-over-year increase of at-home consumption of any food category due to the pandemic.
• The 10 most popular bagel toppings nationwide are cream cheese, butter, flavored cream cheese, cheese, jelly/jam, eggs, deli meat, margarine, peanut butter or other nut butter, and bacon.
• The average person eats more than 11 bagels per year.
• The origins of the bagel have been long debated. Still, most historians agree that the chewy circular bread first debuted in 1610 in Krakow, Poland.
• Why is there a hole in the middle of bagels? In the past, vendors threaded the hole-shaped bread onto dowels and hawked them on street corners.
• In Germany, variations of the word bagel are beigel, meaning ring, and bugel, meaning bracelet.
• Bagels are the only bread that is boiled before it’s baked.
• In the early 1900s, bagel makers worked in teams of four. Two people would make the dough and shape the bagels, one boiled the bagels, and the fourth baked them.