From Market to Main: Hexagon’s Next Chapter

The future home of Hexagon Bagels, on Main Street in North Adams, still has kraft paper on the windows, but the reimagining of the space proceeds steadily toward a planned opening in October!

What’s the latest?

Patrick here, co-owner with Nicholas of Hexagon. We are excited to be the new stewards of the fascinating, long and narrow downtown space that we hope will soon be a bustling cafe and bagel shop. Hexagon is currently awaiting bakery equipment, notably ovens and a walk-in cooler, with opening roughly scheduled for the middle of October. With our opening, we hope to celebrate community support of our business and to enjoy even greater energy bringing folks together in downtown North Adams.

What are you most excited about?

While we have utterly enjoyed bringing our business to the farmers market and meeting countless bagel fans, there is more we can do with a brick-and-mortar location. We look forward to welcoming many more folks to enjoy food in our shop and/or to take home bagels, bread, or baked goods made with care (and with regionally grown grains!). Having production and the cafe located in one spot allows us to walk to work every day! We are beyond ready to transform the time currently spent on preparing and transporting equipment/supplies (minimum 8 hours each week) into time spent in our community.

What do you wish you’d known when you started?

Thinking about our evolution from home bakers to bagel makers now producing 3,000+ bagels per month, we are glad to have been patient with imperfect but practical rented kitchens and to improve our products and our business practices. Nonetheless, we would have benefited from focusing more on raising capital for this project. Relying on personal and business finances has slowed the buildout process and limited the equipment Hexagon is able to access for opening.

That said, we hope for a strong start and continued support of what we do (which will be more than at the farmers market!). Community support has fueled us entirely, up to this point, and it will allow us to stay in business on Main Street, to feed more sourdough, sandwiches, etc. to neighbors and visitors, and to bring on more local folks to be part of a fun and productive team.