Ashley Dikos may have influenced her husband Andrew Martinez’s decision to open the first BO’s Bagels outside NYC in Ann Arbor—she’s a U-M grad from Walled Lake. | Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
Sporting the initials of cofounder Andrew Martinez’s now-grown children, Brody and Olivia, BO’s Bagels is boiling and baking eighteen varieties of bagels—four to five thousand of them daily—on the ground floor of a South U highrise.
Martinez’s wife, Ashley Dikos, grew up in Walled Lake, earned her bachelor’s at U-M, then left for the Big Apple to pursue a career in dance. She eventually went back to school for her master’s of public health at Columbia and worked as a hospital administrator at New York–Presbyterian.
Meanwhile, Martinez’s career in Manhattan’s fine dining scene transformed with a focus on five simple ingredients: flour, salt, water, yeast, and barley malt. Starting from their home kitchen in Harlem, the bagels were a hit with friends and family, which led to catering small business meetings, then the local farmers market.
With no other bagel shops in Harlem, they teamed up to fill that hole. Dikos quit her job months before their 2017 launch—“probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “Fortunately it worked out.”
Aiming to expand into her native state, in 2020 they were just days from leasing the S. Main storefront next to Shalimar when the pandemic arrived. They’ve since opened on Broadway in Washington Heights; this is their first store outside Manhattan.
They do a lot of catering for Columbia University and hope to do the same for U-M. Catering is “a great revenue stream, and it’s also just a great connection to have,” Dikos says.
With an array of cream cheese flavors and sandwich options, ranging from lox to pork roll to vegan Mediterranean ingredients, she says bagels “are very approachable food, and they’re crowd pleasers.”
BO’s is the first commercial tenant in the new thirteen-story Vic Village South apartment building, where Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers will join them later this year. “There’s a big East Coast cohort here, and I feel like this makes a lot of sense,” Dikos says. “This is very college-campus centered, but I want to be able to service all of Ann Arbor. That’s why we’re going to be doing online ordering, delivery, all that good stuff.”
BO’s Bagels, 1116 South University, ste. D. (734) 669–3003. Daily 7 a.m.–5 p.m. bosbagels.com
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