Why Carmine’s is promoting pizza bagels to sell more sauce

Long before viral food mashups like the cronut and ramen burger, Americans were gaga for the fusion of two staples from Italian and Jewish cuisines: the pizza bagel. Its origin is, as Moment magazine put it, “a mess of competing claims,” with bakeries in California and Massachusetts claiming to have invented the pizza bagel in the 1970s, and yet another in Cleveland saying it did so in the 1950s.

But Carmine’s, the New York-based Italian restaurant chain that has a line of jarred tomato sauces, is focused less on the pizza bagel’s past than its future. The brand is partnering with Tompkins Square Bagels to put pizza bagels on the menu at the bagel shop’s four locations , all of which are located in Manhattan, for the month of May.

For Carmine’s, it’s about getting consumers to consider using its sauces on foods in addition to spaghetti.

“We’re really creating new reasons, and I would say new moments, to use it with family and friends,” Erin Pepper, who heads the retail and product marketing arm at Carmine’s, told Retail Brew. “We really like to think of Carmine’s as a sauce that’s more of a pantry staple. So ‘Carmine’s,’ you think pasta, but it’s not just a pasta sauce.”

There’s a long (and tasty!) history of food marketers developing recipes to prod consumers to use their products in different ways and at different times of the day. Rice Krispies did it with its Rice Krispies Treats recipe in 1940, and Chex with its Chex Mix recipe in 1953. Sometimes they develop new products altogether, like Chomps, the meat stick brand not typically consumed in the morning, which recently introduced a Savory Breakfast flavor made with chicken to expand the dayparts when its products are consumed.

Operating at a sauce: Carmine’s opened its first location on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1990, but it would be more than three decades before it dipped its toe into the roiling waters of retail. In April 2020, just a month after the state of New York mandated closing dine-in service for bars and restaurants due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Carmine’s first began selling jars of its sauce, with 100% of the proceeds going to a relief fund for its 450 out-of-work employees.

Three years later, in May 2023, the company announced its jarred sauces would be available in supermarkets, jostling with Prego and Ragù for shelf space.

For this month’s collaboration, Tompkins Square Bagels will feature a different pizza bagel every week, never repeating a bagel variety or sauce flavor. It launched with a Traditional Tomato Basil Pizza Bagel (everything pumpernickel bagel, tomato basil sauce, mozzarella, roasted red pepper, caramelized onions, and fresh basil). Prices will range from $12.50 to $14.

Carmine’s, which does not serve pizza and won’t be serving the pizza bagels in its restaurants, is nonetheless bullish about the promotion and its potential to inspire more people to make them at home with their sauces.

“Pizza bagels are nostalgic,” Pepper said. “They’re also very easy, and they’re universally loved by kids and adults. You can have them for your late-night craving. You can have it for a snack when your kids get home from school.”

Ain’t no topping us now: Carmine’s and Tompkins Square Bagels will collaborate on social media posts that promote the special menu and demonstrate how to make pizza bagels.

If they’re well received, “There might be a place for there to be a permanent pizza bagel” on the Tompkins Square Bagel menu as well.

And if everything does go well, look out Bagel Bites, because Carmine’s next supermarket play could be for the freezer.

“Maybe people love the pizza bagel with Carmine’s sauce,” Pepper said. “Maybe it’s something that we should have in the frozen aisle.”