Donald’s Bagels & Bites reopening

By Bryan Gentry

Published: September 1, 2008

The owner of The Bakery on Timberlake Road wants to fill a hole left in the community when Donald’s Bagels & Bites closed this summer.

Jyl VanDusen had thought about buying equipment from the closed bagel shop. She ended up buying the business and recruiting the original Donald, who opened the place 11 years ago, to help her open it again.

The restaurant will have the same name, and will go back to the original bagel recipe the shop used for years, VanDusen said.

She hopes to have a soft opening as early as this week.

Donald Nugent of Forest started the shop on Lakeside Drive 11 years ago. He and his wife had always run businesses together, and they loved bagels.

“There wasn’t a bagel shop in Lynchburg at the time,” he said.

Making good bagels is an art. “I could give you the recipe but you still couldn’t make a bagel,” Nugent said. “Bagels are the most complicated bread product in the world.”

He and his wife hired a baker whose bagel recipe they liked. They eventually learned the process themselves.

After seven years, Nugent sold the shop to Dan Laslie of Laslie’s Auto Body. Nugent said one reason for that was the grueling schedule of getting up at 2 a.m. to make bagels.

That’s a schedule VanDusen knows well. Between taking her husband to dialysis appointments and making and selling doughnuts, she’s lucky to get a few winks of sleep at night.

“Apparently God thinks that three hours of sleep is too much for me,” she said with a perky smile.

VanDusen sees God’s hand in lots of things, like in the fact that The Bakery came up for sale shortly after she started thinking she’d like to run an eatery.

Or in a situation earlier this year, when a pair of Liberty University students heard about her husband’s medical problems and a pile of bills. The students brought friends to buy lots of doughnuts and donate money for the medical bills.

Or in the fact that everything fell into place to buy a new restaurant.

Donald’s Bagels & Bites closed on July 18. “We were shocked because Donald’s had a good reputation, and seemed to have a lot of faithful customers,” VanDusen said.

She called Milton and Neal Real Estate, who owns the Donald’s building, and asked to see the Donald’s Bagels spot. She just wanted to look at the equipment, but the real estate agent convinced her to call Laslie.

VanDusen gave some thought to re-opening the shop. “Every time I turned around someone said, ‘Please do it,’” she said. She took it as a sign.

One problem: she didn’t know how to make bagels.

She’d thought perhaps the original Donald would help. But no one even knew his last name.

Once she learned his last name, VanDusen looked up his number and called him.

He was happy to sign on.

Nugent sees himself as an instructor who is to teach, get the shop going and step out. “I’m pleased to help someone bring it back to its original,” he said.

He’s looked up some of the shop’s former employees to invite them back. He’s also recommending some business practices, such as offering delivery.

His business used to deliver up to $6,000 of bagels per month, he said.

Some former customers are excited to see the shop open again.

Jim Bartleman, owner of the nearby sandwich shop Roly Poly, said he frequently got morning coffee at Donald’s.

“They had great bagels and great coffee,” he said.

Donald’s focused on breakfast while his shop focuses on lunch, Bartleman said. He’s excited to see Donald’s opening again.

VanDusen said she doesn’t know how long she’ll keep the business. God might have just asked her to be a “foster parent” for the shop, she said.

But she wants to give it her best while she has it, she said.

“I’d rather do one thing right than two things half-baked.”