WATERLOO — The end of an era for traditional New York style bagel-making in Waterloo Region is approaching.

Brian Burechails, owner of The Rise & Shine Bagel Co. in Waterloo, has made hundreds of thousands of bagels over the course of his more than 35 years in the business, but a confluence of factors is bringing the business to an end.

He's 63 and has had hip surgery, but the ongoing hip problems have made bagel-making — a physically tough endeavour that involves a lot of standing, kneading and compiling of hundreds of bagels — even more difficult.

Right now, he's open only two days a week, on Fridays and Saturdays.

He'll start on a Thursday, mixing the ingredients, and is up in the wee hours of the morning for the next two days, using the mixing machine and dough divider that cuts and twists the bagels, while he stands at the end of the line.

He's a one-man bagel-making operation, shaping hundreds of bagels onto trays and transferring them into his custom-made oven, and then out into baskets at the front of the shop.

The business is now retail-only, but years ago, when he owned The Bagel Bin on Erb Street East, he also had a wholesale business.

The business was making as many as 4,000 bagels a day, and employed about 15 people. His wholesale customers included local universities and insurance companies that bought bagels for their cafeterias. The bagels were also sold at local markets and independent grocery stores.

But the building the Bagel Bin was located in changed hands several times. Rent kept going up, so he had to give up that location.

In 2000, he started Rise & Shine at the current location at the side of a building at 52 Bridgeport Rd., in Waterloo, but it hasn't been a good space for a retail bagel shop. He and the landlord have also been locked in disputes over a number of issues over the years.

Meanwhile, his health and hip problems, along with years spent looking after his mother who was stricken with Alzheimer's, cut into what he was able to do. He has some friends who have volunteered to help from time to time but he hasn't been able to pay an employee.

Now, his lease is coming up at the end of April and although he has been trying to negotiate more time on the lease, the business will probably be finished sometime this spring.

Burechails says training another person in his style of making the bagels and selling the business and the equipment would have been ideal, but he just wasn't able to find anyone to do that. "When's gone, it's gone," he says.

Burechails was about 25 years old when he learned the art from a baker in Toronto who was trained in the New York style of bagel making. It was a lot of work, but he was young, fit, and gutsy. "No money, no fear," he says, about how started in the business.

His bagels, which are dense and chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside, are made with "no oils, fats or preservatives." They have been popular locally, winning a number of local bagel taste-test competitions. He makes them in a number of varieties, including plain, cinnamon-raisin, sesame, and poppyseed.

His business is also known for its spiral bagel dogs — dough-wrapped hotdogs covered in cheese. Those sell out quickly.

"I have customers from 35 years ago when I opened The Bagel Bin. At the time, they were maybe students or teachers who were starting out, but they will still come here, and pick up or two or three dozen to take to their kids or to the cottage."

But trends have changed. Even regular customers will admit that they are not eating as many bagels as they used to. Also, Montreal-style bagels, which are softer and sweeter, "more like a dessert," have moved into the market, Burechails says.

The other big change is the growth of the frozen bagel business, which has cut into the business of independent bakeries.

"That's the way the industry goes. The big boys don't want to have to employ bakers at $30 an hour and the frozen food industry is huge. Millions of dollars are spent on getting a frozen product to people, and all they have to do is heat it up for a few minutes and they think they have the original product," Burechails says.

With big restaurant chains and institutional cafeterias now shipping in frozen product from Toronto, there just isn't as much of a market for locally made bagels, he says. "There is no police to say what a bagel is and what isn't. Some of my friends use the term 'fagels" (fake bagels). There are a lot of fagels out there."

But Burechails says his biggest challenge has been the inability to find a location for his business where the rent is low enough to make a go of it.

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"The zoning is prohibitive," he says. Also, a lot of malls and plazas have leasing rules that make it impossible for him to locate next to a business such as a Tim Hortons outlet. The rents are impossibly high for an independent bagel shop in this region, he says.

Burechails acknowledges it is also not the kind of high-margin business people are interested in today.

Still, he says he has loved making bagels and wants to thank everyone who supported the business over the years. "The reward isn't in the money; it's in what you produce and what you make," he says.