One Saturday in March, I found myself taking the train to Cobble Hill for a bagel pop-up at Dae New York—a quite adorable coffee shop, homeware seller, and wine bar. Walking up to the ordering station, Dae’s standard menu was accompanied by a specialty pop-up menu. It offered two bagel options: the first had yuzu kosho butter, kohlrabi sprouts, radish stars, and Ikura (red caviar); the second had honey butter with ginger jam and matcha. Before I had time to order at the cash register, Bagel Bunny founder Sakura Smith, a 26-year-old from Los Angeles, CA, approached me with a smile, took my order and informed me that I got there just in time to get one of the last bagels. I arrived just over two hours after the start time, and all the products had already been sold.

Smith, a graduate of The New School, transferred the specialty starter from her home in LA to NYC during her third year at Parsons School of Design. From there, baking became a constant after friends asked her to bake for them. After some time in New York, she began mainly baking bagels: “It’s an ode to New York,” Smith said.

After graduating from Parsons with a degree in ceramics, Smith stayed in the city, eventually creating her baking company, Bagel Bunny.

The starter used for Bagel Bunny projects is the main attraction to Smith’s baking. The starter  was created in 1974 by a monk in Japan. The bagels are made from fermented vegetable yeast, fed by “carrots, apples, yamaimo (Japanese mountain yam), and rice.” Due to these unique ingredients in the starter, many who try the bagels are left bloat-free. “A lot of people find them easy to digest,” Smith said. 

The starter entered Smith’s life when her “preschool teacher brought the starter back from Japan and learned how to make bread with it from the monk who  first created the starter.” When she was in high school, Smith’s preschool teacher introduced her to this starter and taught her about its history. A mother from her school who used the starter to bake was the one who taught Smith her bread-making skills. 

After a business owner approached Smith to bake for their store, her business took off. Since so many places were reaching out, Smith made a substantial income in the beginning from her own home. 

One day, Smith reached out to The Izakaya, a restaurant which operates only at night, and asked, “Hey, can I use this in the morning? I really want to be in a physical space.” From there, other companies began reaching out to Smith, asking her to cook in their space and sell her products. 

“It started fast,” Smith said. Smith and her mother quickly came up with the name and logo. They chose Bagel Bunny because of the maternal, feminine aspects of the name, along with the ability for “BB” to roll off the tip of your tongue. The logo was then drawn by Smith’s mother, which Smith loved because it felt “sweet like home,” she said. The bagel starter includes carrots, as well, which was a further push for the “bunny” aspect of the name. The company recently turned three this year.

Health is an essential aspect of Smith’s life. While focusing on her health, she also agrees that “you should enjoy your food. But I also don’t want to restrict; that’s not very good.” She has incorporated that into her brand’s mission. “I try to buy everything organic or free range, making sure everything is something I want to put in my body,” Smith said. She and her sister are unafraid to take risks when it comes to food, leading to many intricate flavors and unique toppings. They take inspiration from their love of sushi, and Smith “challenges [herself] to make a new topping combination every time.” 

While the Bagel Bunny business grew fast, Smith has some wisdom for young entrepreneurs trying to start their own business: “Take the time, plan before you start. I feel a lot of my time had been spent trying to catch up because everything has just always happened,” she noted, recalling the story of how her business started. She mentioned the change in flow from baking for her friends to having her own pop-ups at popular coffee shops and restaurants: “I started it so fast, I kind of just had to create a thing.”

While Smith acknowledges her privilege as a young entrepreneur, noting that “if this doesn’t work out, I can always recover and try something else,” she points out that being your own boss also has its issues. “You have no one else to prove anything to; no one’s holding you accountable,” Smith said. Bagel Bunny only employs one person—Sukaura Smith, its CEO. That puts a lot of pressure on someone, especially when this is their first business. Smith finds herself going to lawyers and other business owners when she has crucial questions, considering no one is on her payroll. 

As a firm believer in doing what makes you happy, Smith finds herself pursuing other passions aside from baking: “I’m doing more ceramics, and I’ve been writing recipes for different magazines. I like doing different outlets that aren’t bagels and tapping into this other part of food that is creative.” Smith has no desire to get stuck to one thing; she insists on wanting to keep her creative juices flowing so she can always appreciate her business. However, her ceramics work also relates to the choice of bagels, because the shaping aspect of bagel-making is a callback to her creative education. 

After three years of business, Smith has decided it may be time to shift towards private event spaces. Smith grew tired of using other kitchens: “It’s very taxing on your body, even though it’s really fun to be in different spaces around the world. You’re always running around and prepping in different spaces,” she said. So after moving out of her commercial kitchen space, Smith is now “trying to only do private events and not so many public things. For the scale that I was doing, I find that it is just too expensive to be in a commercial kitchen.”

Smith has big aspirations, and this is a significant step toward her vision for the brand. “It would be a dream to open stores around the world, but I don’t think a huge chain is what I would want,” she said. 

“Mass production is not something I am necessarily interested in, but sharing slow eating and my goods is important to me,” Smith said when discussing the future. Smith also wants to branch out from only making bagels, as her deep appreciation for health has led to her love for making soups and other desserts that don’t contain sugar or gluten. Smith’s dream store would be to “feed people in the way that I feed myself and feels good.”