Our Story

We're Wen Aw and Bryan Heck — partners in life, science, and now, bagels. We live in Mebane, North Carolina, but our story began up north, where we met during graduate school in New Jersey. 

We eventually moved down to North Carolina to pursue research careers and spent years working in academic labs across the Triangle. But after a while, we found ourselves daydreaming about something a little simpler and a lot more delicious. Somewhere along the way, one of us said, “Aw heck, maybe we should just make bagels.” And we did. 

What started as a weekend experiment turned into a real obsession. We took the same curiosity and precision we used in science and applied it to bagels - testing flours, tweaking fermentation times, boiling in malt water, baking just right. Eventually, we landed on the kind of bagel we missed: crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and made with care. 

Now we make small-batch, hand-rolled bagels right here in Mebane, and we’re excited to share them with you. We hope you love eating them as much as we love making them. Thanks for being part of this new chapter with us and for supporting good bagels in Mebane.