By Myles Ma
Pennington Bagel will have more room for its customers this month after putting the finishing touches on a renovation and expansion.
With the new space, the bagel shop and deli will be able to accommodate more of its regulars. Many of them arrive at the shop like clockwork, co-owner Dawn Blauth said.
She adjusted the store’s hours for one man from Hunterdon County who always showed up at 5:45 a.m., though the shop opened at 6. And when the store needed new lights, she made sure to put one right above the table where he always sits and reads the paper.
Most of her customers are return customers, said Blauth, who owns Pennington Bagel with husband Wayne.
“They’ve turned into real good personal friends of ours,” she said.
Pennington resident Tom Wilson is another regular. He raves about the Quality Express coffee and stays to read the paper.
“This place is like a broken drum,” he said. “It can’t be beat.”
On the one day the store is closed, Christmas, Blauth said she and her husband invite the regulars to the store for a cookie, wine and pizza party.
Blauth said Pennington Bagel is the first bagel bakery in Pennington. Part of the reason she, her husband and two other partners who have since left the business started the bakery is so they wouldn’t have to drive to Hamilton for bagels anymore.
The Blauths attended a seminar on how to make bagels held by a company that sold bagel equipment. They ended up buying the equipment and starting their own business.
Blauth said she and her husband took about seven years to perfect their recipe. “It was trying a bit of this, a little bit of that,” she said.
Now, she said, customers come from far and wide to get their bagels, still baked the old-fashioned way. Wayne Blauth works as a tax collector for Pennington Borough, and though they have hired a full-time baker, he still comes in at 2:30 a.m. to bake bagels until 6:30 on Sundays, and even Tuesdays, when he has to work a full day afterward.
Despite the name, most of the Blauths’ business comes from their deli items, and their soups and salads, some of which are inspired by family recipes. One popular item is the chicken salad, made using Dawn’s mother’s recipe.
“When we had a family party, that’s what my mother brought,” she said.
The combo board sandwiches are also popular, especially No. 6, which includes Boar’s Head chicken breast, melted Munster cheese, bacon, lettuce and tomato, and No. 8, with chicken salad, bacon, provolone and homemade honey mustard. In the expansion, Dawn said Pennington Bagel will add hoagies to the menu and will partner with Italian People’s Bakery to serve freshly baked bread.
Blauth also said the store would expand its hours to 7 p.m. — it closed at 5 p.m. in the past — and offer delivery on a limited basis. At the end of the month, she said, the store would have a ribbon cutting to celebrate the renovation.
Blauth hopes Pennington Bagel will be around for a long time. She and her husband just signed a 10-year lease on the store.
“People call us an icon in the community,” she said.
Pennington Bagel is located at the Pennington Shopping Center. For more information, call (609) 737-8990.
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