Bagel Dots, Aarti Garehgrat and Purav Patel
Husband-and-wife team Aarti Garehgrat and Purav Patel began selling Bagel Dots – bite-size bagels filled with cream cheese – out of their home kitchen in the summer of 2014. Garehgrat first dreamt up Bagel Dots when she was working a fast-paced job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in New York City, America’s bagel capital. After a decade in the corporate world, she decided to bring her idea to life and use it to start a business of her own.
Garehgrat and Patel’s first clients were corporations in downtown Houston, that served Bagel Dots at breakfast meetings and events. Soon, Bagel Dots became a local Houston favorite. Garehgrat and Patel now produce them in a USDA/FDA-approved facility, and more than 200 HEB grocery stores in Texas carry them in the frozen breakfast aisle.
In 2016, Bagel Dots won first place in HEB’s Quest for Texas Best competition. The company has been featured on Great Day Houston, KPRCB Morning News, the Tidbits website, and in the Houston Business Journal. In 2018, Bagel Dots was named an American Small Business Championship finalist.
SCORE mentors Judy Myers and Raj Mashruwala supported Garehgrat and Patel as they transformed their business from a catered corporate breakfast snack to a supermarket retail item.
Garehgrat says, “We can honestly say Bagel Dots would not be where we are today without the support and guidance of SCORE and our mentors. Every time we hit a bump along the road, our mentors were right there helping us talk through the problem and connecting us with people and services from SCORE’s network that could help.”
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