This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Justin Wetherill, cofounder of uBreakiFix and now president of Jeff’s Bagel Run. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I never expected to end up in the bagel business.
My career began with broken phones, not baked goods. In 2009, I shattered my own phone and tried to fix it — only to break it worse. That experience gave me a lightbulb moment: If someone like me, a self-proclaimed nerd, couldn’t fix his own phone, there had to be a market for repair.
I started buying broken phones and parts, learning to fix them, and selling the services on eBay and Craigslist. Soon, my friend David and I were meeting customers at Panera during lunch breaks to do on-the-spot repairs. That eventually led to our first uBreakiFix store opening in August 2009. The store outpaced our entire website’s sales, and that success told us something: People didn’t want to wait to mail out their devices. They needed fast, local solutions.
Over the next three years, we grew to 47 corporate-owned locations. We franchised in 2012 and eventually scaled to about 550 stores by the time I stepped away in 2021. We were the authorized repair partner for Google and Samsung, had contracts with top carriers and insurers, and built proprietary tech to ensure consistency and efficiency across our stores.
After stepping back, I took time to reset — spent more time with my family — and thought about what was next.
The bagel pivot
That next step came unexpectedly. A guy in our office started bringing in bagels on Fridays, and we were all blown away by the quality. The bagels were from Jeff’s Bagel Run, a small operation in Florida started by Jeff and Danielle Perera, who had grown from baking at home to selling at farmers markets and eventually opening a couple of shops.
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I was intrigued — not just by the product, but by the potential. I met Jeff and Danielle, heard their story, and saw parallels between their journey and the early days of uBreakiFix. The bagels were exceptional, the business model simple, and the menu tight: just bagels, spreads, and coffee. That simplicity makes scaling easier and keeps the focus on quality.
At the same time, I saw an opportunity to bring the operational and tech know-how I developed in the tech repair world into food. We started building from that foundation, working on ways to scale a small business with a bakery-first concept while keeping the heart of what made the original Jeff’s Bagel Run special.
Today, we have 15 stores, with six more opening in the next six weeks. It’s going to be a busy summer.
I don’t see this as a short-term play. I want to be a “bagel guy” for the rest of my career. What I missed most after leaving uBreakiFix was being part of a great team, working together toward something big. I’ve reunited with many of the same people from that era, and we’re being much more intentional about building something sustainable this time — something we can all be proud of for the long haul.
This time around, we’ve gone even deeper into the tech. We built our own point-of-sale system, kitchen display system, and real-time integrations with delivery platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash.
Our system predicts sales patterns throughout the day and gives bakers real-time recommendations on what to make and when — all to maximize freshness and minimize waste.
I joke all the time that we’re the most sophisticated 15-store bagel chain the world’s ever seen. It seems silly from the outside looking in, but we’ve got a full-stack development team and a full real estate team. We were built like a brand that’s much bigger than ours, the technology that we have is really neat, and we’re really excited to continue to leverage it and use this as the foundation to grow the business.
Scaling, without losing the soul
Everything in our stores is made from scratch, within the four walls. The dough is mixed, rolled, proofed, boiled, topped, and baked fresh every day. That’s not how most national chains operate anymore — they’ve shifted toward pre-made dough or frozen product and expanded into broader menus. But we’ve intentionally kept our focus narrow: we’re a bakery first.
We offer 15 bagel flavors every day, with one rotating “bagel of the day” that brings fun and variety, like blueberry cinnamon sugar or cheddar onion. We also added a full espresso and beverage program, and we’ve even acquired our original coffee roaster to vertically integrate and ensure quality control.
Scaling this kind of model does come with challenges. We use tech to monitor and validate production processes and run secret shopper programs to ensure consistency at the store level. But ultimately, our philosophy is that technology should be a silent partner — it should enable our team to be more human, not less.
While I don’t have a deeply nostalgic connection to bagels like some people do, I recognize their emotional power. My mom used to bring bagels to her coworkers on Fridays, and I saw how that simple act of kindness brightened their day. Bagels are comfort food. They’re tied to people’s memories, routines, and connections.
At Jeff’s Bagel Run, we want to honor that. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel — we’re just trying to make the best wheel possible, every single day.
