Leroy’s Bagels leases on Platte for long-desired second location

Sarah Green has found the second location for her bagel shop — for real this time.

“I’m honestly probably not as excited as I should be,” she said. “I’m really weary. Until it’s open, I’m going to be mild about it.”

The owner of Leroy’s Bagels at 4432 W. 29th Ave. in Sloan’s Lake is targeting an October opening in about 1,400 square feet at 1553 Platte St. She said she’s been searching for five years and was close on three different spots, at one point even signing a lease in Uptown.

Green, 34 and a Boulder native, has run the business since 2017. Leroy’s — which sells about 1,300 bagels a day — does over $1 million in revenue a year and frequently runs out of food items as closing time draws near, she said.

Green first planned to open a second location in Park Hill in 2019, but spiked it over concerns that the location wasn’t a good fit. A few years later, she signed a lease at 595 E. 19th Ave. in Uptown. That deal unraveled due to issues with the building’s electrical power. Last year, another stab at leasing elsewhere in Uptown didn’t come together either.

“I think the fact that this is happening now is really special … What would have happened if I did sign a lease in 2019, how I would have been affected (by the pandemic?)” Green said. “I learned so much about bagels, I learned a ton about my business, how to run it, where I can cut back all of these things that I think will allow for success here.”

Zach Cytryn with Fuel & Iron Realty brokered the latest deal, and the original Uptown lease, for Green.

“I used to live in Commons Park West, right across from the space. I always loved Platte Street but bagels were missing from the block,” Cytryn said.

The new location will be a “cut and paste” of the original store with some extra features, such as a coffee bar, added to the space. Daily hours of 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. will probably remain. The menu will mostly be the same offerings of coffee, bagels, various cream cheeses and bagel sandwiches, with most items costing under $10.

Leroy’s also wholesales, with its biggest customer being The Bardo Coffee House on South Broadway. Green said a second location will alleviate a challenge on that front.

“(I) oversold our wholesale when I assumed that Uptown would open,” she said. “So I oversold that knowing what we’d be able to produce there and when that kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed, I was still trying to hold on to our wholesale, and so that was a really tedious balancing act.”

The Platte Street spot used to be home to the Habit Doughnut Dispensary, sharing space with Carbon Café & Bar. Both closed last year. It’s just one of a few eateries along the strip to close recently. Wonder Press, a juice bar at 1540 Platte St., will shut down for good this week, leaving just its original Boulder location.

“We took on a space that was too large for us, in a pricey part of town, signing an expensive lease right before the pandemic hit,” the business said in an email to customers. “We made a lot of sacrifices to stay open for three full years, hoping that once things were ‘back to normal’ our store would work. It’s become clear to us now that it will always be an uphill battle in this particular space.”

Green, meanwhile, is focused on growing Leroy’s. She believes three locations would be an ideal number for her to manage.

“I don’t think I’m going to be the next bagel empire … my goal always at Leroy’s has been like a neighborhood spot and I got to stay true to that,” she said.