A Brief History of the Cream Cheese Filled Bagel

My last post which questioned the uniqueness of the new Kraft Bagel-Fuls (that I originally wrote about last Thursday) was getting filled up with endless updates, so let me summarize in a new post what my research about the history of this concept has discovered:

An eagle eyed reader over at Serious Eats spotted a cream cheese filled, normal shaped round bagel, at the website for SJR Foods:

Turns out, the product seen above is called the “Unholey Bagel” and was released by SJR foods in 1997. Larry Baras is credited as the inventor by some sources.

However, A U.S. Patent for the idea of a cream cheese filled bagel was issued on May 7, 1996 to a man named Alvin Burger. It is unclear what Burger’s involvement with the “Unholey Bagel” is, but he was working to patent the idea around the same time, after he lost the rights to a product he invented called the “Bagel Ball” while he was the owner of Roasters & Toasters.

Alvin Burger holds a U.S. Patent not just for the idea of a bagel pre-filled with cream cheese, but for the boiling process, steaming process and forming process involved in making it. He is also credited with founding Al’s Famous Filled Bagels, and for creating Bagel sticks and New Orleans style bagel sticks.

For those who did not see my earlier update, there is an article from Chicago Business which may answer a lot of people’s original questions. It appears, based on the article, that Kraft’s new Bagel-Ful’s are intended to be bagel STICKS, not full bagels. Also, they are intended to be microwaved, not toasted.