Southland Bagel, which developed a devoted following serving up homemade, hand-rolled bagels in both classic and nontraditional flavors at the Lexington Farmers Market, now has a permanent home on Southland Drive.
Partners Sam Williamson, Tom Johnson and Tim Schosser—who run the business along with their wives, Lindsey, Becky, and Isabel—opened Southland Bagel’s new storefront at 428 Southland Drive in late September. The shop serves bagels, coffee, sandwiches, soups and salads from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays (though those hours may eventually extend until 5 p.m.) and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
The new shop offers a counter for carry-out service as well as a sizeable space for dine-in eating. Guests can also watch the kitchen staff in action through a custom-built window that offers a view into the prep space.
Williamson, a Lexington native, met Johnson and Schosser, who are cousins, when all three worked in the kitchen at Brontë Bistro at Joseph-Beth. They became friends and eventually started talking about launching their own food-based business.
Co-founders Tom Johnson, Tim Schosser and Sam Williamson opened Southland Bagel at 428 Southland Dr. in late September.
“We had kicked around a couple of concepts, and whenever our families would get together, we’d always cook for each other,” Williamson said. “We were looking to develop a family-friendly place that we could bring our kids to. Bagels just kind of seemed to be a thing where there was a niche here. There weren’t a lot of other options in town.”
As the designated “kitchen master” among them, Johnson began developing and testing bagel recipes early this year. By Super Bowl Sunday, he felt like he’d found a winner. Williamson and Schosser agreed, and the partners went all-in on the business. They established a regular presence in the Incubator Kitchen at Lesme Romero’s Lexington Pasta Garage, leased vendor space at the Lexington Farmers Market, and even chose the name Southland Bagel before they had secured a location on the iconic Lexington street to eventually establish their storefront.
“At that Super Bowl Party, I said, ‘Let’s go 100 percent in on this [name],’” Williamson said. “We rolled the dice. We knew we wanted to be on this strip, and four months later we were signing the lease.”
Southland Bagel’s new home has a long history of providing carb-based goodness, having been the site of Cottrell’s Bakery in the 1960s. “My mom used to ride her bike here to get French bread,” Williamson said.
Sourcing local ingredients has also been a priority for the partners since day one. The bagels are made using Weisenberger Mill flour and are boiled in Kentucky sorghum. Also driving their business model are innovative bagel flavors, like tomato herb, that customers may not have experienced before.
“That’s the flavor that made me want to start trying to make bagels at home,” Johnson said. “I’d had tomato basil bagels in other cities off and on throughout the years, and I really wanted one, so I decided to make some, and now here we are.”
In addition to classic flavors, Johnson and the team plan to offer avant-garde varieties like Buffalo bagels, Old Fashioned bagels (with hints of bourbon and orange), jalapeño cheddar bagels, Churro bagels and more.
At the back of the facility, behind Southland Bagel’s main workspace, the team also plans to set up their own small incubator kitchen as a way of paying forward the help they received at Lexington Pasta Garage.
“We’re going to rent kitchen space to tenants. There’s a demand [for incubator space], and there aren’t a lot of options in town,” Williamson said.
“There’s so much good food in this town, and we have 60 years of food experience between us,” he said. “It just felt like it made sense [to help support other entrepreneurs].”