Milena Pagan was a retail strategist for CVS Health Corp. in 2016 when she told the pharmacy giant she was quitting this steady job with a good salary to open a bagel shop. She told her family and friends, too.
Did she get pushback?
“I am sure people privately thought that I was crazy,” said Puerto Rico-born Pagan, who had no experience in professional bagel-making or owning a food establishment at that point. “But I am not here for people who tell me I can’t do something. To those people, I say, ‘Just watch me.’ ”
Pagan, who has a chemical engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set about putting the pieces in place to launch Rebelle Artisan Bagels LLC on Providence’s East Side. Her goal was to make the kind of bagels that she used to get when she lived in Brooklyn, N.Y.
First, some patience came into play. Tinkering with the bagel-making process in her home kitchen gave her confidence that she could do it. Creating high-quality bagels may be time-consuming, but she’s proved the result can be worth it.
Over 24 hours of work go into each bagel. The dough is divided and rolled by hand, then put in a cooler for slow fermentation. The bagels are then boiled in a malted barley bath before they are baked to the point that a blistery crust forms, making them crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, Pagan says.
So, after quitting her job, spending experimentation time in her kitchen and committing to taking her venture large scale, she used kitchen space in the Hope & Main incubator in Warren. But there was no small-business loan. Rebelle was bootstrapped in part with a Kickstarter campaign.Pagan said the company didn’t access financing until the opening of a second Providence location in 2020 – an all-day cafe called Little Sister LLC.
“We opened Rebelle [at Camp Steet and Doyle Avenue] with $135,000 and did a full-gut renovation, bought equipment, hired six employees, and that was all we had to start with,” she said. “All the money that came in, we kept in the business, and we worked for free a lot,” said Pagan, referring to herself and her husband, Darcy Coleman, whose title she gives as “chief supporter of Milena.” Handling myriad responsibilities, he joined the company officially after a year.
Rhode Islanders, meanwhile, came through the doors and ordered bagels by the dozens.
Rebelle Artisan Bagels’ success has come in many forms: its profits, reviews and growth. Even Pagan’s former boss at CVS frequents Rebelle and eats the bagels.
“He loves them,” Pagan said proudly.
Having brought that little bit of Brooklyn to Providence, Pagan moved on to tackle challenges and expand on her accomplishment.
Bagels and cream cheese go together like coffee and cream. But Pagan never could have foreseen that as a bagel shop owner, she’d be in the midst of a cream cheese shortage, the result of which Rebelle and Little Sister still must manage somehow.
According to news reports, the cream cheese shortage traces back to a cyberattack on a major Wisconsin cheese plant and distribution center, which closed temporarily last fall.
Pagan says that dealing with the shortage has been a mix of ordering their preferred brand from their vendor and having the delivery not show up; buying in bulk at retail warehouse stores but needing to unwrap each package individually; or selling cream cheese at a loss and having customers still complain about the price.
She’s also had to reengineer some Little Sister recipes that call for cream cheese. Finding a new cream cheese supplier means significant effort to establish a relationship and negotiate price, she says.
“This is part of the restaurant business, there is always some threat around the corner,”said Pagan, who lives within walking distance of both Rebelle and Little Sister. “You have to persist and endure.”
Another recent challenge has been staffing. Rebelle Artisan Bagels is now open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and Little Sister – a cafe with brunch all day and tapas, oysters and wine at night – is open Thursday through Monday, with the hours dependent on when she can get help. There are just over 20 employees between the two locations.
Dynamics on the East Side don’t always mesh with hourly work, says Pagan, meaning staff members have to commute in from Federal Hill and other neighborhoods in the city.
But she sees the challenges as rewarding to tackle.
“I’m in this because it’s a fun ride,” said Pagan, who is planning a third location in Cambridge, Mass. “I’m not trying to build a rocket and go to the moon. I’m just making bagels in Providence.”
