South Philly’s Korshak Bagels is closing

South Philly’s Korshak Bagels announced it will close permanently after 2½ years of business. The last day for the shop, at 10th and Morris Streets, will be Sunday.

Owner Phil Korshak posted a video to Instagram Monday morning to share the sad news. He holds up a series of signs (”Hi,” “I have some hard things, true things to say”) before cutting to a letter addressed to “Dearest South Philly.”

“The shop simply can’t function economically. And provide a living wage. And work/life balance. And reasonable prices,” the letter read. “The staff would prefer to continue; but the changes to the process in exchange for efficiency are not changes I think are going to be successful or are on brand for Korshak Bagels. Much of this involves automation of dough. Some of it involves moving to a computer kiosk interface. While I am honored by the staff’s sharing of their vision, it is not a vision I share.”

Korshak has only taken seven or eight days off since landing on the bagel shop’s home four years ago, the letter continued. “I cannot continue in this way. I am genuinely sorry to say that I have failed my vision. I am genuinely grateful that the people around me value my health more than the existence of the bagelshop. I am massively grateful to be in accordance w/ that philosophy.”

The closure may be unexpected given Korshak’s popularity; not only does it regularly draw crowds, but its bagels have earned accolades from Craig LaBan as well as the likes of the New York Times and Bon Appétit.

The end will come as no surprise, however, to those familiar with the increasingly fraught economics of running a restaurant as well as the bagel shop’s poet/scholar owner.

“Long in the coming,” Korshak said by phone Monday morning. The shop required around 10 employees working at any given time to function, he explained. “Three people who are going to make all the dough, two people who are going to boil it and bake it, to roughly five people running [front of house],” he said.

At $3 a bagel, Korshak struggled to make ends meet, have any work-life balance, and also maintain his standards, including paying a living wage (the starting wage there is now $16) and allowing employees to accrue paid time off, he said.

The staff at Korshak Bagels was one of the first in the city to unionize at an independent cafe (Korshak voluntarily recognized the union) and to win a contract. The union, represented by recently formed food-service union Local 80, was at the bargaining table again recently, negotiating its second contract.

“The closure of Korshak bagels is a huge disappointment to Local 80, and in our perspective, not necessary,” said Local 80 representative and former Korshak employee Lily Fender in a statement. “While we respect Phil’s need to step away from the business for his own mental and physical wellbeing, we very much believe there are avenues toward a healthy, profitable business model at Korshak Bagels that supports thriving union jobs and a more sustainable work life balance for ownership.”

“This closure should be used as a learning experience and the lesson is not that unionization will cause closures,” the statement continued. “The lesson should be that in order to treat workers with dignity and respect in an industry that has done exactly the opposite for all of time, owners will need to make major changes in production and organization of labor that may require sacrifice of individual vision or philosophy. We encourage anyone interested in buying Korshak Bagels to approach Phil about a sale that we believe could benefit him financially and also transition the union shop to a healthy next phase. Korshak workers will be releasing a longer statement soon with information about a GoFundMe to support them after the closure.”

» READ MORE: As Starbucks and Good Karma unions face big challenges, Philly’s other coffee shop unions are still moving toward a contract

Korshak said he gave employees a month’s notice (and Local 80 the same). He gave the public a week’s notice “because I didn’t want staff to have to deal with the thing that’s happening right now,” he said of the outpouring of support and sympathy on social media that will surely translate to long lines later in the week. “Two to three weeks of the sort of maelstrom that’s occurring as we speak is invigorating only in that it notes that we’re all connected.”

He acknowledged that he could raise prices to $5 a bagel, “but I want to pose the question about whether presenting something that is necessarily a boutique item is good and appropriate. My answer, resoundingly, is no, it is not.”

When Korshak signed the lease on the space at 1700 S. 10th St. in February 2020, his goal was ”to run this tiny, tiny shop that … exists for the livelihood of the neighborhood around it and vice versa,” he told The Inquirer. As he built out the shop, Korshak would scrawl messages on the paper covering up the doors and windows, writing something between a poem, a stream-of-consciousness missive, and a love note to neighbors and passersby. The handwritten notes continued even after the shop opened in May 2021, when it started selling out day after day.

Korshak doesn’t know what he’ll do next, but pointed to two bright spots on the horizon: the long-awaited debut of Cleo Bagels in West Philly and the newly announced residency of CJ & D’s Trenton Tomato Pies in Cartesian Brewing, an outfit launched by one of Korshak’s original employees.

Will Philly taste Korshak’s bagels again after Sunday? His in-the-moment answer was no, he didn’t know. “The thing that I wanted — and it’s super-duper-duper sad — isn’t really a thing that can happen. Not in reality,” he said. “What this is and what this has been, while beautiful in many, many, many ways, has not been successful for me.”