When Bart's Bagels announced it was coming to Bala Cynwyd earlier this year, fans flooded the chain's social media channels to express their excitement. But one comment stood out from the rest.

"I could cry," Kylie Kelce wrote on Instagram.

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This celebrity endorsement wasn't surprising to Kyle and Brett Frankel, the brothers who founded Bart's Bagels in 2020. Kelce and her husband Jason have both hyped the business on their respective hit podcasts; Kylie even shared it was her first meal after giving birth to the couple's youngest daughter. For the past four or five years, the Frankels say, the Kelce family has ordered weekly from the original Bart's Bagels in West Philly.

The third shop, which will open at 273 Montgomery Ave. at the end of the month, won't just bring the brothers closer to their famous fans. It's also a homecoming for the pair, who spent their earliest years in Bala Cynwyd before busting onto the Philly bagel scene with shops in Mantua and Bella Vista. The new location will be their first space in the suburbs.

"We’ve been playing with the idea of opening our first suburban shop for a year or two now," Brett Frankel explained. "It was trying to find the right space for us, and being comfortable with our first expansion outside the city. Just because we do operate two city stores now and the suburbs, while they are close, it's a different demographic, different customer, and we wanted to make sure it was a place that we're super familiar with. 

"When this location became available, we thought it was an opportunity that we couldn't pass up."

Bart's regulars will recognize the menu at Bala Cynwyd. It's the same array of bagels, sandwiches and retail, right down to the monthly specials. But the new building, which formerly housed Tony Roni's, offers unique advantages. It will be the only Bart's Bagels with seating, dispersed between tables and a breakfast bar. The rest of the 20,000-square-foot space will replicate the experience of the other locations, each modeled on the New York bagel shops the Frankels frequented while visiting their uncle on the Upper West Side.

"Right in front of you to the left, you're going to see bagels being kettle-boiled and baked on burlap boards in our revolving bagel oven," Brett said. "You'll also be able to see the action behind the line where the different cooks are cooking up egg sandwiches, or lunch sandwiches or bagel and cream cheese sandwiches and all that good stuff."

Though competition was scant when the Frankels started their business, a lot has changed in the past six years. Kismet Bagels and Bagels & Co. made their debut at roughly the same time as Bart's Bagels, and have likewise grown their own regional empires. Spread Bagelry has been claiming territory for even longer, opening 13 locations in the region since 2011. 

Now, out-of-towners are also crowding in. The D.C. chain Call Your Mother is planning to open multiple locations in Philly later this year, while PopUp Bagels planted its flag in Ardmore this spring. Is this town big enough for this many bagels?

The Frankels think so — or at least, they're not worried about theirs. Bart's prides itself on making everything from the cream cheeses to the smoked fish in-house, and its founders believe this extra effort sets them apart from the rest.

"It's an extra layer of love and hard work that goes into making a sandwich," Brett said. "That's what we do."

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