Exodus Bagels Stops Wandering and Opens Permanent Shop Next Week

Another bagel pop-up gets a permanent home this month: Exodus Bagels is finally ready to open. It’s been a bit of a winding road for Exodus, a popular farmers market staple that ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in mid-2016 to fund the opening of a Roslindale diner at 2 McCraw St. But this month’s opening is not there; it’s in Jamaica Plain, in the former Canto 6 space at 3346 Washington St.

As announced in 2017, a year after the end of the Kickstarter campaign, the Exodus team had to temporarily move away from its Roslindale diner dreams, with owners Adam Hirsh and Priscilla Andrade continuing to use the Roslindale space as a commercial kitchen but preparing to open a storefront in Jamaica Plain first — in a space that is already properly zoned and licensed for food service, unlike the Roslindale space, which requires a restaurant zoning variance.

The team still fully intends to open the Roslindale restaurant eventually, but to keep the business alive, Exodus had to jump on the chance to quickly open up a smaller retail storefront, and the previous home of Jamaica Plain’s beloved Canto 6 bakery provided that opportunity.

“There were many sleepless nights aggravating over this decision to pivot because of the very public promise we made to all of you,” the Exodus team wrote in an August 2017 Kickstarter update, regarding the promise of a Roslindale location. “But here’s the thing: If we don’t make this change in our plan, Exodus will not be viable for very long. In the end we felt it more important to stay in business and (eventually) fulfill our promise rather than continue full steam in the wrong direction.”

And so the day has almost arrived for the first piece of the Exodus brick-and-mortar puzzle: The Jamaica Plain space officially opens on February 13 with bagels and bagel sandwiches galore; the hours will be 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and Exodus will be serving its “full market menu with some sweets and some beverages.”

For an earlier sneak peek, the doors will open at 10 a.m. on Sunday, February 11, with free bagels and cream cheese. (Neither coffee nor bagel sandwiches will be available on Sunday.)

“After four months of grinding, we are finally ready to open our doors to the public and begin the long awaited feeding that we all love so much,” the team wrote on Facebook on February 7. “Today we passed our final health inspection and are so f#%king excited to bring this incredible space to life with food and people...Just to reiterate, we will be staying in Roslindale where we will be producing all of our food and working on realizing the 2 McCraw Street location into another storefront. We understand that the timeline for this is well past due but we are a small business that had to make this pivot to survive. We thank you for sticking with us and hope you will come out on Sunday and check out our new digs and eat some bagels and cheese! ON US!! The wandering ends Sunday!”

Exodus Bagels is not the only Boston bagel pop-up to settle down into a permanent location lately: Better Bagels arrived in the Seaport District just a few months ago, and of course there’s Bagelsaurus — the matriarch of the Boston bagel pop-up-to-brick-and-mortar scene — which opened in Cambridge in late 2014.