Once named a best new restaurant in America, a Raleigh spot is set to expand
A Raleigh bagel shop that Bon Appétit once named one of the best new restaurants in America is expanding with a second location.
The wildly popular Benchwarmers Bagels will open a second shop in Raleigh, moving into Kane Realty’s new Rockway Raleigh development near Dix Park.
Benchwarmers debuted in 2018 in the Transfer Co. Food Hall as the sister bagel shop to Raleigh’s acclaimed bakery Boulted Bread. Owned by Josh Bellamy and Sam Kirkpatrick of Boulted, Andrew Cash of Jubala Coffee and chef John Knox, Benchwarmers made the case for ambitious Southern bagels, using a wood-fired oven and an endless run of creative and classic sandwiches.
“We’re looking most forward to having our own four walls,” Kirkpatrick said. “It’s been amazing at the food hall, but it’s also been like living inside someone else’s house. We can’t wait to fully realize the potential of the bagel shop.”
The original food hall location of Benchwarmers will remain open and unchanged by the expansion.
“We’re not leaving Transfer; this is not a replacement shop,” Kirkpatrick said. “That shop is home.”
The new Benchwarmers location will be 4,000 square feet, triple the shop’s current footprint, and continue baking bagels in a wood-fired oven. Weekend pizza nights will also continue, with Benchwarmers’ popular thick crust style also expanding to the new space.
In 2019, Benchwarmers was named one of the 50 Best New Restaurants in America by Bon Appetit. Four years later, the magazine put a spotlight on the shop again, including it in a list of the best bagels outside of New York.
With those buzzy accolades, Benchwarmers has considered numerous offers for expansion, the owners said, but they saw this location, only about a mile from the original spot, as connected to Raleigh’s growth.
“We certainly listened to a lot of people and we really, really believe in Dix Park,” Kirkpatrick said. “This is on the greenway, it’s near Dix Park, it’s at the gateway of Raleigh. We see an exciting future for Raleigh (in Dix Park), it’s one of my wildest dreams of our city. (The park) encourages us to slow down a little bit and lean into leisure. We’re excited to be on the periphery of that and have a shot at a permanent home.”
Benchwarmers menu
With its own space, Benchwarmers will also add a drink program alongside its well established coffee offerings. Expect brunch cocktails like Bloody Marys and beer and wine in the evenings.
In tripling the space, Bellamy said Benchwarmers will have the ability to triple its capacity and ideally end early sell outs. Boulted recently moved into its own larger space and Bellamy said that expanded not only capacity but breathing room.
“Something that struck me with the larger space in Boulted, sure it enabled us to make more stufff, but we were also able to pay more attention to the stuff we already make,” Bellamy said. “That’s something that excites me the most. It’s a way larger footprint and it gives us more physical space to actually work. It represents to me a doubling down on quality.”
Holey dough evolves
Today, the Triangle has a handful of notable bagel shops proving the South knows a thing or two about holey dough. The Benchwarmers owners still hear gripes that their fermented style of baking isn’t “a bagel” but those comments pop up less and less as the Triangle seems to embrace bagel evolution.
“When we originally opened the space, all four of us had very little understanding of what we were about to embark on,” Bellamy said. “By making bagels in the South we were sticking our necks out there in a really big way and it’s been humbling in so many ways.”
But the Benchwarmers folks believe that maybe they’re teaching a new generation what a bagel can be.
“The pie in the sky goal for us was to become that neighborhood bagel shop and become the standard for customers and their children to compare bagels from other places for the rest of their lives,” Kirkpatrick said. “We’re starting to see that. We’ve been around long enough to become that special memory spot for some people.”
