Jeff Perera, founder of Jeff’s Bagel Run, joins Give an Ovation to share how fresh baking, community connection, and real hospitality helped him grow a local passion project into a rapidly expanding brand. With 12 locations—and more on the way—Jeff explains why guest experience starts with joyful moments, empowered teams, and scratch-made bagels that stay true to their roots.

Hospitality Over Customer Service (3:21)

“We don’t just want good customer service—we want hospitality.” – Jeff Perera

Jeff shares how his team lives out the brand promises of baking fresh, bringing joy, and building community with every guest interaction.

Keeping the Local Feel While Scaling (5:13)

“The goal is to connect with people in the community.” – Jeff Perera

Even as Jeff’s Bagel Run expands across states, Jeff emphasizes that genuine connection—like remembering customer names—keeps the experience personal and grounded.

Freshness Until Closing Time (12:02)

“Fresh baked bagels don’t need to be toasted.” – Jeff Perera

Jeff explains why they bake all morning long, ensuring guests get hot, fresh bagels even near closing—rather than reheated or stale products.

Training Teams to Create Joy (8:29)

“We empower the team to own the guest experience.” – Jeff Perera

Jeff outlines how proper training and in-the-moment coaching empower team members to handle guest needs with warmth, flexibility, and positivity.

Simple Requests, Big Impressions (10:05)

“It’s about making it easy for guests to say what they want.” – Jeff Perera

From little adjustments to big smiles, Jeff believes every guest request—no matter how small—is an opportunity to create loyalty and make someone’s day.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (15:25)

Jeff gives a shoutout to Amanda and Dave at DG Donuts, and the team at Hunger Street Tacos, for showing how kindness, hospitality, and community support fuel success in the restaurant world.

Links:

https://www.instagram.com/jeffsbagelrun/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyperera/

Transcript

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:23:00

Zack Oates

Welcome to give an Ovation the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover real strategies and actionable tactics to help you create a five star guest experience. This podcast is powered by ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. It gives you the insights you need without annoying your guests with endless questions.

00:00:23:01 – 00:00:42:19

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And today, I am so excited to have Jeff from Jeff’s Bagel Ride. Jeff started Jeff’s Bagel Run actually, after losing his job, his wife wanted him to have a hobby and he started a bagel shop. And now, Jeff, you’re up to how many locations?

00:00:43:00 – 00:00:59:09

Jeff Perera

It’s a love story, Zach. It’s truly a love story. We have 12 locations now with four out of state. So we started in Orlando, Florida. We have eight here in Orlando, Florida, and then four out of state. We are opening our next number. 13 opens later this month in Charleston, South Carolina. Super excited.

00:00:59:11 – 00:01:22:11

Zack Oates

Man that is amazing. And I’m a huge fan and by the way, for those who can’t tell or for those who aren’t familiar with the background noise, that means you probably are on the wrong podcast because this is a restaurant podcast, and what you hear in the background is the beautiful sound of restaurants. Jeff is in a restaurant right now because he’s launching one of his specials.

00:01:22:13 – 00:01:27:14

Zack Oates

Tell me about how this came to be, this pimento cream cheese idea.

00:01:27:14 – 00:01:50:16

Jeff Perera

So yeah, I love I love this cream cheese. It’s so good. So last year we were watching just kind of the cultural moment that the Masters, the all time was having. And then it spilled right into Kentucky Derby weekend. And this spring time, especially springtime in the South is all about good food, better weather. And we were like, we have to do this next year.

00:01:50:16 – 00:02:05:12

Jeff Perera

So we tested b R&D all season long trying to get the right cream cheese. I leave the as a joke and cheese. I have some I brought. We just did a whole activation this morning and a photo shoot, but like check this out. Forget these. How amazing is this?

00:02:05:17 – 00:02:07:09

Zack Oates

That looks amazing.

00:02:07:11 – 00:02:28:00

Jeff Perera

I mean, magic cream cheese is it’s different. It’s got that whipped airiness I’d like a nice whipped cream cheese has. So it’s not as like runny and drippy as a typical pimento. But this is really just coming from like living in the South for a long time now. As a northeastern transplant, you adopt things and things become part of kind of your own culture.

00:02:28:00 – 00:02:34:08

Jeff Perera

And pimento cream cheese is just like, it’s so good. Spicy cheesy is sauces.

00:02:34:10 – 00:02:47:05

Zack Oates

Well, I’m excited because I wish I were down there to try it right now. Well, I wish I was in Florida for a bunch of reasons, but I wish I was down there to try it, because the only time I get pimento cheese up here in Utah is when chick fil A runs there, like pimento cheese sandwich.

00:02:47:07 – 00:02:47:22

Jeff Perera

Yeah, yeah.

00:02:48:01 – 00:03:07:24

Zack Oates

And my dad grew up in Georgia, so he’s a big pimento cheese fan. But the texture, I can’t do it. So I wish I could be down there to try that, because that sounds exactly like what I would like the flavor, but with the cream cheese texture. And I love that you’re doing stuff like this. So I love that you’re trying it, that you’re adapting to the local environment.

00:03:08:01 – 00:03:21:20

Zack Oates

And it really trying to create a unique guest experience. And so using like the pimento cheese is a case study because I just love that. But talk to you about your overall philosophy about guest experience.

00:03:21:22 – 00:03:39:02

Jeff Perera

Yeah. So when we started who sold from our home, we were a cottage food operation and the guest experience was truly one on one. We’re exchanging DMs and Instagram and Facebook. We’re making phone calls to make sure we have orders. Right. So it was a very much a 1 to 1 transaction that just lives in the store today.

00:03:39:03 – 00:03:57:15

Jeff Perera

We take the customer in front of us. We make sure that that experience is hospitable. We want to create not just good. And this is what I think. It’s definitely there’s good customer service and then there’s hospitality. The two different things. And yes, we try to live in a world of hospitality and it kind of we filter that through our three like brand promises.

00:03:57:15 – 00:04:20:03

Jeff Perera

We talk about these internally. We don’t post them anywhere but to speak fresh, bring joy, build community. So everything we do in the store is filtered through that promise to ourselves, to our customers and bake fresh. That’s an easy one, right? Everything is created fresh scratch made products in-house every day. The bring Joy component. This is the one where our teams get to come to life with our customers in-store.

00:04:20:05 – 00:04:37:15

Jeff Perera

And so whether it’s a can’t decide between two cheeses, hey, just have both your skill, your coffee on the way out. Like here’s another one. Just simple things. Because when you come into a bagel shop, it’s really about happiness. And like, I mean, who doesn’t love a good day? I should there be no sadness in the bagel shop whatsoever?

00:04:37:17 – 00:05:02:05

Zack Oates

And I think that when you look at it as I look at like, bagels and I look at what we’re growing up and what that meant to me especially grew up in new Jersey. Bagels were just like a staple. It was like Friday pizza and Saturday bagels. It was just something that you did 100 and nowadays, especially where I’m at here in Utah, it’s hard to get that same experience of like your local bagel shop.

00:05:02:07 – 00:05:13:03

Zack Oates

And out here there’s chain bagel places, which are fine, but having that local bagel shop and being able to maintain that as you’re growing to 12 locations, how have you done that?

00:05:13:05 – 00:05:34:14

Jeff Perera

So I think the key to be staying local as you get bigger is connecting with your community and our general managers, our franchisees, they are invested in their communities. They live in their community. They work in their community. Obviously. And so their goal is to connect with people in their community. So customers that come in, remember their name, remember their order.

00:05:34:14 – 00:05:49:20

Jeff Perera

Yeah. When they switch their order, there’s a guy that comes in as a nickname, even in his mobile app now he identifies himself as Salt Alex because we he heard us call that one time when he walked in were like, salt, Alex. And because salt puts his bagel every single day, he ordered a salt bagel. That’s what he got every time he walked in.

00:05:49:22 – 00:06:10:18

Jeff Perera

It’s all bagels, all big. It’s all bagel. And so now he was like, salt, Alex. We’d see him walking up and it’s like, hey, salt, Alex. And he thought it was funny. So that’s how he even identifies himself and his mobile orders now. And the deli connection, that connection with the people becomes so valuable. And I think that’s how you start to make something big or small.

00:06:10:20 – 00:06:32:21

Zack Oates

That is so important because I talked to my my CEO coach showed me about when she was living in Brooklyn. There was a bagel shop or sorry, there was a coffee shop. That was great. And it was 30s closer to her apartment and in the opposite direction there is a coffee shop. That was good, but it was 30s further away from her apartment and she says, which one did I go to?

00:06:32:21 – 00:06:52:05

Zack Oates

And I’m like, well, obviously the one that was closer and better. And she goes, I went to the one where they knew my name and she would go to the one. It wasn’t a bad coffee shop, it was still good, but they would say her name when she walked in. And that’s the difference between giving someone good service is giving them the right food at the right time.

00:06:52:07 – 00:07:13:16

Zack Oates

The hospitality is how you feel about that, right? I think Will Guidara might have said something about that, and I think that that’s the whole concept, and I love that you are encouraging your staff to do that as you growing to 13 locations, because normally that stops at location two when Jeff stops coming in to Jeff’s Bagel run, right.

00:07:13:18 – 00:07:35:13

Jeff Perera

100%. And as we train teams in new stores, whether it’s here in the Central Florida area or out of state, we try to infuse that level of energy like we kind of joke like, everyone can be Jeff. Every single person can be me. Now you’re not me. It’s obvious, right? But like, you can be me. You can do the same things that I do or the same things that Danielle does.

00:07:35:13 – 00:08:01:22

Jeff Perera

So, Danielle, I had the privilege of being her husband and she’s the reason the bagel exists. I made it for her. So she’s our partner in this business. She runs all the operations and like, we just built this brand and this business. On the idea of taking care of people, bringing joy to the life that they’re in. And if you just stick with that, regardless of what level of like if you’re a dishwasher, if you’re a barista, if you’re the general manager, the franchise owner.

00:08:01:24 – 00:08:04:18

Jeff Perera

For me, it doesn’t matter. Like, how can I bring you joy today?

00:08:04:20 – 00:08:15:02

Zack Oates

Yeah, I love that. Because don’t we all have that little missing center sometimes that we just need to fill it with some joy? And pimento cream cheese is the case for ferment.

00:08:15:04 – 00:08:17:05

Jeff Perera

Yeah. Fill up in.

00:08:17:07 – 00:08:29:10

Zack Oates

So what are some tactics as you’re looking at scaling your brand and scaling this hospitality first approach. What are some tactics you use to improve the guest experience.

00:08:29:12 – 00:08:57:19

Jeff Perera

So I think the first thing that we do in every store is train our teens really well. It doesn’t matter if we have a pimento cream cheese, slim limited time offer, if the team doesn’t know what it is, how it’s made, why we’re doing it, what it’s about, then they’re unable to tell that story to the guest. So training your team first and foremost and making sure that they feel empowered to provide that level of service and hospitality to the guests is what makes the biggest difference.

00:08:57:21 – 00:09:14:06

Jeff Perera

That’s the first thing we do all of our team members get as much training as they need coaching feedback in the moment, and that helps them feel good about what they’re doing, selling, promoting. And then and it comes out to the team. So the second thing that we do is I mentioned it’s kind of like part of the fashionable.

00:09:14:06 – 00:09:32:22

Jeff Perera

We empower the team. The team has to feel like they have ownership of the experience. It’s happening right in front of them. So there should be no reason for them to say no. We’re a bagel shop, right? I mean, bagels, cream cheese, coffee. None of this is rocket science. It’s all really simple. It’s hard work. Making scratch dough every day is hard work.

00:09:32:23 – 00:09:48:13

Jeff Perera

Working in a kitchen with two 500 degree ovens is hot. Hard work. You know, it’s not easy work, but it’s simple. So if we just strip it down to the most simple, like, what can I get you? How can I serve you? It just takes everything by me. Give the team the power to do that.

00:09:48:15 – 00:09:52:14

Zack Oates

What are some of the weirdest things that team members have told you? That I guess I’ve asked for?

00:09:52:16 – 00:10:05:08

Jeff Perera

There’s nothing really bizarre, is just the fact that people have the level of comfort and feel like they can ask for it. To me, I think that’s like the fart. That’s bizarre, because I think in so many places that you go to today, you kind of think like, oh man, I wish I should get that sandwich, that pickles.

00:10:05:14 – 00:10:19:00

Jeff Perera

I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to bother them because the team looks like foot off. Right? Like if you walk up to the counter, you’re like, have a special order. You’re like, oh, I can just peel the pickles off myself. So you know what I’m talking about. Like, you walk up to that counter and you can tell that the person there doesn’t want to be that.

00:10:19:05 – 00:10:25:04

Zack Oates

Oh, yes. And you worry because it’s like, okay, if I ask them for a special order, are they going to spit in my pickle? Like, think I’m.

00:10:25:07 – 00:10:46:13

Jeff Perera

Going to do like, yeah, I’m just coming in to try to get a bagel and cream cheese or whatever I want. I want my coffee. I’m not trying to make your life or your day any more difficult. So I think having that this side approach of it and so customers will ask for weird things. I’ll ask for extra pumps of sirup after we’ve already placed the order and like, you know, try to get a couple extra pumps of something or they’ll say, oh, I actually wanted a splash of milk.

00:10:46:13 – 00:11:03:08

Jeff Perera

More like there’s, there’s a little tiny request, but everything in like a bagel shop is just so easy to execute on and take care of in that just needs right then and there. We just do it. I worked in retail for a long time, and I did some retail sales, and I did some other types of sales, and I always try to get to yes, right.

00:11:03:08 – 00:11:18:00

Jeff Perera

Like the goal in sales is like, how do we get to yes? How do we get to yes. So we just try to teach the teams ways to like get to this. Yes. For the customer, there’s there hasn’t been any crazy requests that are beyond our mouth. It’s not true. We do get people ask us all the time to toast bagels.

00:11:18:00 – 00:11:25:16

Jeff Perera

And we don’t have a toaster in our stores. You bake fresh all morning long, so it’s like hot comes out of the oven so you can’t get a toasted bagel or just bagel run. So that’s the only thing I can’t do for you.

00:11:25:16 – 00:11:30:02

Zack Oates

So no way. No toaster in a bagel shop.

00:11:30:04 – 00:11:32:23

Jeff Perera

Which is pretty standard old school bagel shop style.

00:11:33:04 – 00:11:53:15

Zack Oates

Yeah, but I’m just saying the bagel shops that I go to, I mean, like, everyone that I go to, like Jersey Boy Bagels, Moorestown, new Jersey, that’s what I grew up on every weekend. Go in there, I get my Taylor ham and egg and cheese, and I get my cinnamon raising and cream cheese. But I would always get my cinnamon raisin bagel toasted just so that it would like.

00:11:53:17 – 00:12:02:07

Zack Oates

I wanted it really to melt that cream cheese down. But know for sure I love that you don’t have it. It’s like that’s confidence of saying like, we’re that fresh.

00:12:02:13 – 00:12:17:04

Jeff Perera

And I think that’s exactly it because fresh baked bagels don’t need to be toasted. I can remember growing up in a Point Pleasant Beach, Toms River, and then I spent some of my more formative years in South Florida. But like, you go to a bagel shop and they have all the bagels for the entire day sitting on the rack.

00:12:17:09 – 00:12:18:17

Jeff Perera

When do they get made?

00:12:18:19 – 00:12:19:22

Zack Oates

At 2 a.m..

00:12:19:24 – 00:12:39:20

Jeff Perera

Probably, yeah, 100%. That’s exactly right. If you walked in at 930, that bagels already seven hours old and it’s starting to get hard, and it’s that we need to touch that you need to like, bring it back to life. But we built a system internally that allows our bagels to come out of the oven all morning long. I’m sitting right across from my ovens right now in my shop and like, there’s fresh bagels in the oven.

00:12:39:24 – 00:12:44:19

Jeff Perera

We’re recording. It’s 1151, so there’s fresh bagels coming out at noon. We close in two hours.

00:12:44:21 – 00:12:59:24

Zack Oates

Jeff, come to Utah, we do a year. I will keep you in business. Yes. That’s exactly oh my gosh. I literally want to get in a plane right now, Jeff, and come down there to Jeff’s bagels. I’d be like, do you?

00:12:59:24 – 00:13:02:00

Jeff Perera

Part two of this podcast live? It’d be.

00:13:02:00 – 00:13:25:16

Zack Oates

So, yes. I just want just nice fluffy, warm because like, for example, there is a place I lived in Dallas and there was a grocery store right down the street from us. And when do people bake bread? Well, everyone knows that you wake up at some unholy hour and you start baking bread in the morning, but the thing is, like, we don’t live in the Middle Ages anymore.

00:13:25:20 – 00:13:59:02

Zack Oates

People don’t get bread first thing in the morning. That’s not how it works. When do you need bread? When you eat bread. As an American family, you eat it with dinner, right? So what this grocery store did is they baked all of their bread in the evenings and afternoons. And so every day I would come home from work and I would swing by this grocery store and I would get bread that was so hot, Jeff, when I cut it at home, once I brought it home and I cut it, I had to use a towel to hold the bread because it was that hot, right?

00:13:59:04 – 00:14:24:01

Zack Oates

But I love that you’re doing things in how the guest would like it, because when someone comes in for lunch, they still want a hot bagel. I don’t want a stale bagel. 100% come in for lunch. And I love that you’re doing that, man. And I think that any listener right now can take this principle and look at their guest experience and think, how do I bake bagels fresh out of the oven two hours before closing, metaphorically speaking?

00:14:24:01 – 00:14:28:17

Zack Oates

Because that is truly putting the guests first. And that’s powerful. Jeff I love that man.

00:14:28:19 – 00:14:46:15

Jeff Perera

Thank you. Yeah, we think it’s a big differentiator in what we’re doing. And we really believe in a I mean, opening a restaurant is a big investment to buy a $300 commercial toaster wouldn’t be like the straw that broke the camel’s back. But we believe in our product, and we believe in the experience it creates for the customer and for our guests that that’s more important.

00:14:46:17 – 00:14:56:08

Zack Oates

I got to break it to you. There, Jeff. If you ever sell to P, you know, the very first thing they’re doing is they’re putting toasters in your stores. So like don’t sell, don’t sell out.

00:14:56:10 – 00:15:03:06

Jeff Perera

Hopefully we build a good enough business case that they’re like, oh wow, look at that and give it a run. They’re a great business without a jobs bill.

00:15:03:11 – 00:15:20:03

Zack Oates

Well I’m going to say if you do sell, please sell to someone that’s cool. Like savory brand that let’s like the restaurant keep their soul. So anyway, no doubt. Well, Jeff, I know it’s kind of interesting because you’re not new in the industry, but you don’t have like a 30 year background in the industry, so I’d love to hear this answer.

00:15:20:04 – 00:15:25:13

Zack Oates

Who do you follow? Who do you think deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry? Who do you learn from?

00:15:25:19 – 00:15:43:09

Jeff Perera

That’s a great question, because the one thing that I have found in this, my short time being in the restaurant industry, is that people actually want to help you. It doesn’t feel that way, but they really do. I think there’s like, we all have tough skin because we work long, hard hours. Whether it’s super early in the morning, it’s super late at night.

00:15:43:09 – 00:16:16:24

Jeff Perera

We are gritty, we’re working hard, but there is kindness. There is a real kindness within the restaurant industry and a willingness to like, lift people up and support them. And so the first person that I looked at, and this was a very local small business here in the Orlando area, but it was a company called DG donuts. They have a single donut shop and they started very slowly now I did, they were making donuts in their own kitchen selling that farmer’s markets, and they opened a brick and mortar and they grew their business and they were incredibly helpful to me in understanding how to get started.

00:16:17:01 – 00:16:49:05

Jeff Perera

And then once I got started, there is an outpouring of support from local restaurant tours, from people who ran bakeries and taco stands or whatever it was to offer help and say, hey, have you thought about this? Or when you’re approaching this? And that’s why I have this amazing contact list in my phone of local business owners that are just really, truly friends now who yeah, I could pick up the phone and answer a question or just like kind event sometimes is when you’re starting something, when you’re actually when you’re you’re very lonely, you’re alone.

00:16:49:06 – 00:16:57:17

Jeff Perera

It’s just you. Yeah. Danielle and I can bounce ideas off each other, but, like, we’re just commiserating together. And so it’s nice sometimes to call someone up and say.

00:16:57:19 – 00:16:59:02

Zack Oates

Hey, what would you do? How would you.

00:16:59:02 – 00:17:10:18

Jeff Perera

Yeah. How did you get calls in control? Or, hey, I had this customer experience that it kind of went self, what would you do having that a group of people to call and find out like where network was then and dive.

00:17:10:20 – 00:17:18:00

Zack Oates

100%. I love that man. So anyone in particular that we should any like social channels that we should follow?

00:17:18:02 – 00:17:40:04

Jeff Perera

Oh man I definitely think you should like. So locally here in the Central Florida area, you should shout out Digi donuts! Amanda and Dave over there are awesome. And then my friends at Hunger Street Tacos, Joe Creech and his wife and brother own it. And just phenomenal people like really grounded in hospitality, grounded in serving their community. And they’ve been just incredible support to me.

00:17:40:06 – 00:17:45:01

Zack Oates

Awesome, I love that. Well, Jeff, how do people find and follow you and Jeff’s bagel run?

00:17:45:03 – 00:18:02:18

Jeff Perera

So at Jeff’s Bagel run, everywhere you name the platform, that’s where we exist. That’s how we show up. So please follow us there. Just Bagel run.com is a great resource. You can also download our mobile app. We have a really awesome mobile app available in the Google Play Store, also in the Apple Play Store.

00:18:02:18 – 00:18:05:07

Zack Oates

So and do you ever post on social?

00:18:05:09 – 00:18:21:22

Jeff Perera

So I do post a little bit personally on my social. Jeff Dot era. You could find me on LinkedIn. I’m a little bit more active personally on LinkedIn, but I still run the social media account for Jeff’s Bagel run. So if you DM there I will hit it. I have some help now. I have some help that a social media manager who supports us, but I run the host.

00:18:21:23 – 00:18:23:00

Jeff Perera

I still run the social.

00:18:23:02 – 00:18:32:12

Zack Oates

That is US event. Well Jeff for giving pimento cheese the facelifted needed. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Giving Ovation.

00:18:32:15 – 00:18:35:05

Jeff Perera

It’s been great. Thanks for having me back I appreciate it.

00:18:35:07 – 00:18:57:19

Zack Oates

Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovation up.com.