A Brief History of the Cream Cheese Filled Bagel

by Eick · February 26th, 2008 · 9 Comments

My last post which questioned the uniqueness of the new Kraft Bagel-Fuls (that I originally wrote about last Thursday) was getting filled up with endless updates, so let me summarize in a new post what my research about the history of this concept has discovered:

An eagle eyed reader over at Serious Eats spotted a cream cheese filled, normal shaped round bagel, at the website for SJR Foods:

Turns out, the product seen above is called the “Unholey Bagel” and was released by SJR foods in 1997. Larry Baras is credited as the inventor by some sources.

However, A U.S. Patent for the idea of a cream cheese filled bagel was issued on May 7, 1996 to a man named Alvin Burger. It is unclear what Burger’s involvement with the “Unholey Bagel” is, but he was working to patent the idea around the same time, after he lost the rights to a product he invented called the “Bagel Ball” while he was the owner of Roasters & Toasters.

Alvin Burger holds a U.S. Patent not just for the idea of a bagel pre-filled with cream cheese, but for the boiling process, steaming process and forming process involved in making it. He is also credited with founding Al’s Famous Filled Bagels, and for creating Bagel sticks and New Orleans style bagel sticks.

For those who did not see my earlier update, there is an article from Chicago Business which may answer a lot of people’s original questions. It appears, based on the article, that Kraft’s new Bagel-Ful’s are intended to be bagel STICKS, not full bagels. Also, they are intended to be microwaved, not toasted.

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9 responses so far ↓

1 Cheese Articles » Blog Archive » A Brief History of the Cream Cheese Filled Bagel // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:42 am

[...] Original post by Eick [...]
2 DCBlogs // Feb 26, 2008 at 3:37 pm

[...] A Brief History of the Cream Cheese Filled Bagel [...]
3 I Am Tired of Spreading Cream Cheese on a Bagel for Myself | Serious Eats : Required Eating // Feb 26, 2008 at 4:23 pm

[...] yet another late-breaking, cream cheese-filled update from our friend sogoodblog, this time with an unexpected U.S. patent twist to the [...]
4 So Good Blog/News Round-Up 2/29/08 | So Good // Feb 29, 2008 at 1:06 pm

[...] Baby follows up on So Good’s coverage of who actually invented the cream cheese filled [...]
5 A Brief History of the Cream Cheese Filled Bagel (://URLFAN) // Mar 6, 2008 at 10:23 am

[...] Brief History of the Cream Cheese Filled BagelSource: http://www.sogoodblog.com/2008/02/26/a-brief-histo…Displaying mentions in this article, for full text please visit source.My last post which questioned [...]
6 Kraft Bagel-fuls: A First Look | So Good // Mar 6, 2008 at 1:59 pm

[...] what of the questions/controversy over whether someone else besides Kraft holds the patent for this product? For this venture Kraft has partnered with a smaller company who designed a pre-filled bagel [...]
7 tabloid baby: Cream cheese-filled Israel Baseball Bagelgate! Investigation shows IBL founder Larry Baras' greatest "invention" was invented by someone else! // Mar 23, 2008 at 11:08 am

[...] a real pickle: evidence that Larry Baras did not invent the cream cheese-filled bagel after all.A story posted yesterday on the blogsite So Good (“an absurd look at the world of food”) [...]
8 So Good's Top Stories of 2008 | So Good // Jan 8, 2009 at 2:23 pm

[...] similar to what Kraft was proposing. This is when my inner Sherlock Holmes sprung into action. My investigation uncovered the fact that someone already held a patent for a cream cheese filled bagel, along with [...]
9 sandy scott // Jan 22, 2009 at 1:41 am

i was told to go to your website to get a coupon to try out the bagelful’s but i don’t see any coupon’s can you send me some. thanks