Owner Phil Korshak cited the impossibility of making ends meet, maintaining values, and having any work-life balance as reasons for the popular bagel shop's demise.
“The closure of Korshak bagels is a huge disappointment to Local 80, and in our perspective, not necessary,” said Local 80 representative and former Korshak employee Lily Fender in a statement. “While we respect Phil’s need to step away from the business for his own mental and physical wellbeing, we very much believe there are avenues toward a healthy, profitable business model at Korshak Bagels that supports thriving union jobs and a more sustainable work life balance for ownership.
“This closure should be used as a learning experience and the lesson is not that unionization will cause closures,” the statement continued. “The lesson should be that in order to treat workers with dignity and respect in an industry that has done exactly the opposite for all of time, owners will need to make major changes in production and organization of labor that may require sacrifice of individual vision or philosophy.
Korshak said he gave employees a month’s notice . He gave the public a week’s notice “because I didn’t want staff to have to deal with the thing that’s happening right now,” he said of the outpouring of support and sympathy on social media that will surely translate to long lines later in the week. “Two to three weeks of the sort of maelstrom that’s occurring as we speak is invigorating only in that it notes that we’re all connected.
He acknowledged that he could raise prices to $5 a bagel, “but I want to pose the question about whether presenting something that is necessarily a boutique item is good and necessary. My answer, resoundingly, is no, it is not.” When Korshak signed the lease on the space at 1700 S. 10th St. in February 2020, his goal was ”to run this tiny, tiny shop that …around it and vice versa,” he told The Inquirer. As he built out the shop, Korshak would scrawl messages on the paper covering up the doors and windows, writing something between a poem, a stream-of-consciousness missive, and a love note to neighbors and passersby.
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