Just as the sun starts to peek over the horizon, an armada of SUVs pulls into the parking spaces along Allegheny Avenue in front of THB Bagelry and Deli in Towson. At precisely 6 a.m., the front door is unlocked and the drivers file in. They’re of a group of men who meet at this beloved bagel shop bright and early every Wednesday to mull the vagaries of marriage, kids, work—life—over coffee and breakfast.

“It’s like a men’s book club without the book,” says Chris Brown, the first to arrive.

Sunlight streams into the vibrantly colored store filled with the alluring scent of freshly cooked bagels, which bakers have been preparing since 4 a.m.

Kyle Weadock grew up in the area and has been coming to this original location, then called Towson Hot Bagels, since he was in high school.

“It’s an institution,” says the 43-year-old father. He usually orders sausage, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel. “I did do the omelet for a while, when I was trying to watch the carbs. That was a lost cause. This is a hard place to come if you’re trying to watch carbs.”

Ain’t that the truth. But these bagels are so worth it. Most traditional bagels are essentially the same—boiled, then baked dough with a hole in the middle. But there is an elusive art to creating the perfect version.

THB’s fat, flavorful bagels have just the right combination of crispness, chewiness, and pull, which has made them a local—and now regional—staple for more than a quarter century. In the 27 years since the first shop opened, the company has served more than 70 million of them.

“Our mission is to be the best part of people’s day,” says CEO Tony Scotto, the unlikely leader of this ever-expanding bagel empire.

He speaks not with a New York accent or our familiar Baltimore one, hon, but with an Italian inflection so prominent you might think he was from Naples. Which he is.

Tony, his twin brother, Ciro, their sister, Oriana, father, Luigi, and the siblings’ first cousin Gennaro Di Meo bought part of a pre-existing business, then a hole-in-the-wall, one-location-only bagel shop, in 2008. This one on Allegheny Avenue is the OG.

Since then, the family, which became exclusive owners in 2019, has built the business into an eight-location behemoth with 250 employees. In 2024, they completed a makeover of the stores by renovating the Towson location, which is now twice as large as its original footprint. In the next three years, they hope to open up to another 25 stores. Theirs is a true American immigrant success story.

“I didn’t come here from Italy just to be here,” says Scotto, 39. “I came here to achieve whatever I could achieve. That’s why I say, ‘How many stores? I don’t know.’ As long as [we] keep getting better, I’m happy. That’s what’s driven us since day one.”

On this June morning, the dozens of bagels—onion, poppy, sesame, blueberry, marble, egg, and the heavyweights, everything and plain—in bins in the display case came out of the kitchen’s oven, but they were born five miles away.

In April, the company opened its brand-new, roughly 16,000-square-foot commissary kitchen and corporate headquarters on Cromwell Bridge Road. Each morning, a team of bakers mixes flour, malt, salt, sugar, and yeast with water to create 550-pound batches of dough that will eventually become THB bagels. Prior to opening the new facility, the company’s capacity was around 15,000 bagels a day. Now, the sparkling new equipment at the commissary can churn out 12,000—per hour.

It’s a seven-figure investment, says co-owner Gennaro Di Meo as he walks through the towering storage shelves, frigid freezer rooms, and soon-to-be-occupied offices.

“We were not born here, but we were made in Towson,” he says, shaking his head as if marveling over how far he and his family have come.

Roughly 4,500 miles. That’s what separates Baltimore from Monte di Procida, the small town in Naples where the family grew up. Patriarch Luigi Scotto was involved in the restaurant business in the United States, including as a partial owner of Strapazza, a now-shuttered Italian eatery that sat on Allegheny Avenue near Towson Circle.

One by one, his children emigrated to the U.S. and began working at the restaurant. Tony Scotto, just 19 when he arrived for good, started as a dishwasher before eventually bussing tables then becoming a manager. Strapazza was right next door to a bagel shop called Towson Hot Bagels. Being from Naples, the Scottos were more about Italian bread and focaccia than the American breakfast staple. But they became fans right away and were regulars at the shop.

Strapazza had several outdoor tables, which often would be occupied on weekends by customers of the neighboring bagel shop, which had only four. Jokingly, Ciro Scotto asked its owner to pay rent for the tables.

“The [owner] pulls out a bunch of money and says, ‘How much do you want?’” Tony Scotto says. “We were just off the boat from Italy, big dreams, no money. We were impressed. A few weeks go by, and my brother says to him, ‘Why don’t we open one of your stores together somewhere else?’ He says, ‘Why don’t you just buy mine?’”

Although the Scottos’ grandfather owned a deli in Naples, where Tony worked cleaning shelves and stocking pasta for next to no pay beyond what he jokes was fresh mozzarella and prosciutto sandwiches, the younger generation knew next to nothing about bagels.

Nonetheless, they recognized the bond the store had with its customers and bought in. They immediately started reshaping its look and began planning for a second location in Canton. One aspect of the business, however, remained untouched.

“We changed many things, but we never changed the recipe,” Tony says.

Years later, Tony has become so enmeshed in the world of bagels that hearing him talk about how they’re made is like listening to a science teacher explain photosynthesis. Spoiler alert: Water, long rumored to be the key to the deliciousness of New York bagels, has little to do with it. The art, he says, is in the attention to detail.

“[There] is a chemistry that needs to happen, and that changes daily,” says Tony, who still enjoys the top seller—bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel—once or twice a week. “If it’s more humid, you need to adjust the recipe. If it’s a drier day, you need to adjust. After that, when you boil the bagels, some need to stay in the kettle a little bit more or a little bit less. So it’s very hard to standardize. I think we did a good job over the years to create  some good guardrails, but there is still a human component that you need to know.”

Hoping to avoid the infighting that plagues so many family businesses, in 2012, the Scottos created a defined role for each of them in the company: Tony serves as CEO; Ciro is in charge of real estate; Gennaro runs procurement; and Oriana does the books. In addition, they have worked with business coaches to ensure that the operation runs smoothly so familial relations remain copacetic.

“When something goes wrong—and things happen every day, right?—you can be transparent and direct,” says Di Meo, 45, who converses with his relatives in Italian. “We understand each other.”

After the Canton store opened in 2009, locations in Timonium, Charles Village, Columbia, Owings Mills, Locust Point, and Bel Air followed. Cheesesteaks, paninis, wraps, and sandwiches (some with cheeky names, like the Sophia Loren—oven-roasted turkey with mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and mayo on a kaiser roll) have been added to the menu, as have new ways to order.

Today, 95 percent of orders come in digitally, whether that’s through an in-store kiosk, the THB app, or a third-party delivery platform. In the unlikely event that a customer wants to interact with an actual person, each store always has at least one living, breathing human being behind the counter available to take orders.

Along the way, the company’s name morphed from Towson Hot Bagels to THB. Later this year, it expects the first franchised location, in Thomasville, North Carolina, to open. (Coincidentally, the “T” in THB fits well there, too.)

Several factors are considered when they look for a new location. Some—foot traffic, parking, visibility—are predictable. Others are not.

“One thing that I stress all the time is how the sun hits the store,” Tony says. “We are in the morning business, so I like when the sun, as soon as it rises, hits the store so you can see the vibrancy inside the store. We are all about energy. Bagels is what we sell, but actually it’s the energy.”

After the bagels are machine-formed, they’re sorted and boxed by hand, then blast-frozen. They’re trucked from the commissary kitchen to each store, where they undergo a 48-hour process before being sold.

Among the staples are often batches of colorful varieties that the company has become known for making on a limited basis throughout the year. The first were pink bagels for breast cancer awareness, an October offering that continues more than a decade later. There have been green bagels for St. Patrick’s Day, blue and white for Hannukah, purple for Ravens season, rainbow bagels to celebrate Pride, and purple-and-teal bagels for a fundraiser for the Maryland chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

This year, THB teamed up with Jimmy’s Seafood to create crabby everything and crab-Asiago bagels. But none have proven as wildly popular as the Maryland flag-colored variety that debuted in 2017. “People go bonkers for those,” Tony says.

When the bagels arrive at each store, they are refrigerated before being brought out to rest at room temperature for three or four hours. After going back in the fridge, they reemerge the next day to proof, which allows them to assume their familiar form and flavor.

After a float test to determine whether they’re ready, they’re cooled again until the next day.

“It’s not something you can rush,” says Jeff Tingle, THB’s manager of training and development. “The ultimate judge is your eyes.”

The morning that they’ll wind up in the display case and ultimately in someone’s stomach, they’re boiled in a kettle for 10 to 30 seconds before being placed on wooden burlap-lined planks that go into the oven, which rotates them for about 15 minutes at 500 degrees. Misshapen, undersized, conjoined, or any other bagels deemed aesthetically displeasing are tossed. About 140 dozen are sold throughout the day.

Every day, just one, lone, perfect bagel reaches iconic status. Taped to the wall behind the kettle is a sign proclaiming “Hero Bagel.” Upon it is hung each morning the plumpest, roundest, seediest (in this context, that’s a compliment) bagel to emerge from the oven. There it remains for the rest of the day, serving as an example of what a THB bagel should aspire to be.

When the store closes at 3 p.m., its fate will be the same as the rest of the bagels that remain unsold (ideally, fewer than 100). They’re either given to charity (community fridges, school events, marathons), taken home by the staff, or thrown away. One thing is for sure: It won’t survive the night.

“Nothing makes it until tomorrow,” Tingle says.

In a little more than 12 hours, bakers will be back before dawn to start boiling the bagels, frying the bacon, and brewing the coffee that all create the unmistakable scent-track of morning at THB.