“It’s like food for the soul. There’s nothing like eating a good bagel.”
This is the ethos of Tiffany Lopes and her entire team at Sunrise Bagel. Not only do they serve up hundreds of hand made, deliciously creative bagels, sandwiches, and pastries each week, but they do it with a genuine smile on their faces and a palpable joy for their jobs. I have truly never had a bad customer experience there. (And I’m not just saying that in the hopes of getting free food.) Pre-ski days, post-nights out, mid-day pick-me-ups: they do it all.
But how, exactly, did this Waterville institution come to be?
Lopes, the owner and founder, was a stay-at-home mom who “had that entrepreneurial itch for years but did not want to take away from [her] mom duties because [she] loved what [she] did.” An avid home baker, Lopes had always had a particular appreciation for sourdough baking, but had no formal training in any commercial kitchens. But when her third and youngest child left for college, Lopes found herself an empty nester ready for her next chapter. And it was her youngest daughter, who has since graduated and returned to work in the family business, who pushed her mother to follow her passion: “Enough thinking. It’s time for doing.”
The first location opened in the south end of Waterville in 2021. Besides opening a restaurant during COVID, Lopes and her team dealt with rocks thrown through the windows of their new store, minimal space, and Lopes and only other baker being responsible for all of the production. In 2023, they opened in Augusta, and that location became the hub for all of their bakery production. Now, a team of six bakers meets at the Augusta location every morning at 3:00 a.m. to prepare bagels to be distributed to their other two (soon to be three!) locations. In 2024, they opened in Oakland. This was a particularly special store for Lopes because it was completely a blank canvas: they had no architect, no bathroom, not even any water or electricity. Their fourth location will have its grand opening in Gardiner on December 19 of this year.
Lopes emphasized her appreciation for both her family and the surrounding community. While she runs much of the production and store management, her husband works behind the scenes with business operations. Her staff is unfailingly kind and hard working, and operates under the motto of “Show up. Work Hard. And take the high road.” Management is very passionate about providing their staff a living wage, and soon hopes to provide full health insurance on top of their vision, dental, and IRA benefits. As many of Lopes’ team are young, she really emphasizes teaching them how to save money and build a career, but this is not the only place Lopes’ maternal instincts are demonstrated in her business.
Before the bagel business, Lopes was a yoga teacher and carried the idea that you should “be kind to everyone you meet, because everyone you are seeing fights battles you know nothing about.” For Lopes, the long days are all worth it because she gets to feed people; she says that “food is basically my love language.”
She also considers herself a people pleaser, and gets immense joy out of being creative with her products. As the business’ success continues to grow, Lopes laments that she cannot be in all three places at once. Her perfect Saturday includes stopping at each of her three stores to connect with her staff and the community. With expansion comes some loss of flexibility, but Lopes emphasized her gratitude for her team. At the beginning, she “didn’t know how [she] was going to sell a bagel and a cup of coffee and keep the lights on.”
But they are so much more than a bagel and a cup of coffee. They are a community. Lopes recounted a favorite memory with a customer: a woman in her nineties who came in within the first six months of opening and had never had a bagel before. Lopes, a natural giver, recounts the enormous smile her customer walked out with, after not only being given a bagel on the house, but a history of the food’s culture, too. “You never know what people are going through,” she says.
Beyond individuals, Lopes looks to the broader community. Their Za’atar bagel (a personal favorite of mine, particularly with lox, chive cream cheese, and onion) is a nod to the history of Waterville and strong Lebanese influence. The spices are all bought locally. “The Caroline” is a Sunrise specialty, named in honor of Lopes’ late sister. It started as a savory treat: a bagel with five half cuts, filled with cream cheese, dipped in garlic butter, and warmed up to order. There is also a sweet version with cream cheese and raspberry jam), and Lopes says the first time she made it Sweet Caroline came on the radio, and she knew it was meant to be. Everything she and her team does is absolutely full of love.
And the bagels are really damn good.
Despite growing up around a large Lebanese community, I had never had a Za’tar spiced bagel before coming to rural Maine. It quickly became a favorite. A KenneBEC on an onion bagel is the perfect hungover morning treat; the dried onions are somehow caramelized without being crispy or burnt, and it nearly becomes sweet. The “Kickin’ Maple Honey” is quite simply one of the best things I have ever tasted. It needs nothing besides a quick smear of chive cream cheese. It is the best, most balanced version of hot honey with an infusion of delicious, carby, sourdough bagel.
That’s another thing: all of Sunrise’s bagels are sourdough based. I got to see the kitchen, including several buckets of mother yeast. (My father, like everyone else, began baking sourdough bread during COVID. It is delicious, but starter runs thicker than blood. He might need some lessons from Lopes and her team.) They also steam their bagels instead of the typical boiling process. Whatever they do, it is obviously working.
You cannot go to any of the Sunrise locations on a Sunday morning without seeing another member of the Colby community. You will often also see little kids getting ready for their soccer games, families smushed around a small table, and friends young and old gossiping about the events of the previous night. There is a reason the phrase “breaking bread” is such an enduring expression. Because food is a tangible expression of love, warmth, and care. Sunrise epitomizes this. And you get a pretty special bagel out of it, too.
~ Charley DiAdamo `27
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