Column: Why California's favorite bagel shop is defending fossil fuels

I’m having trouble tearing my eyes from the bagel-making machines — the industrial device that rolls the dough into the perfect shape, round with a hole in the middle; the conveyor belt that flits back and forth, depositing the freshly carved slices of dough into neat rows of four by six; the robotic arm that picks up a tray of 24 bagels every eight seconds, depositing each on a rack that will soon be moved to a fridge to cool overnight before baking.

Fortunately, Emily Winston reminds me why I’m here.

The Boichik Bagels founder and owner steers me toward four lower-profile pieces of equipment in her Berkeley factory: two kettles and two ovens. Her bagels, 14,000 per day, boil in the kettles before being transferred to the ovens to bake. It’s all crucial to the process, Winston says, of making the classic New York-style “water bagel.”

“This is exactly what they’ve been doing in New York for decades and decades,” she says.

In a strange twist, Winston’s bagels — which have become a national phenomenon — help explain why Berkeley residents voted overwhelmingly this month to reject a ballot measure aimed at confronting the climate crisis.

Those kettles and ovens? They’re powered by natural gas, one of the fossil fuels heating the planet and causing ever-deadlier heat waves, larger wildfires, more intense droughts, heavier flooding and rising seas. Although cars and trucks are California’s biggest polluters,14% of the state’s planet-warming emissions come from commercial and residential buildings, predominantly from gas combustion for space heating, water heating and cooking.

That’s why Fossil Free Berkeley gathered signatures to put a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot that would have taxed gas use in buildings over 15,000 square feet. The tax would have applied to roughly 600 buildings in the Bay Area city, generating more than $26 million in its first year alone — money that would have gone toward clean energy programs, such as incentives for families and businesses to install electric heat pumps and induction stoves.

“Every organizer had periods of relative optimism and relative pessimism,” said Brianna McGuire, who gathered signatures for Measure GG. “In the last month of the campaign, we realized that things didn’t look good.”

Indeed. Because even as the “Yes” campaign racked up endorsements from climate activists and organized labor — Sunrise Movement Bay Area, 350 Bay Area, SEIU Local 1021 — large natural gas users responded in force.

Boichik Bagels owner Emily Winston points to a natural gas line at her factory in Berkeley on Nov. 14.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

Some of Berkeley’s most beloved culinary institutions — including the Berkeley Bowl grocery store chain, Acme Bread Co. and Fieldwork Brewing Co. — urged voters to reject Measure GG. Same with the David Brower Center and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Politicians known for their strong climate records joined the “no” choir.

The city’s famously progressive voters took heed, refusing the tax by a 2-to-1 margin.

“There are still a lot of people in Berkeley who don’t think gas is dangerous to health,” McGuire said.

I’m sure she’s right. Even as scientists have shown that gas stoves can spew nitrogen dioxide, benzene and other potentially deadly pollutants, there’s been little progress toward getting them out of homes. Two months ago, for instance, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill requiring newly sold gas stoves to come with health warning labels.

The main reason for the dearth of progress? Probably the gas utility industry. Sempra Energy, parent company of Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, has spent nearly $2.8 million lobbying state lawmakers and the Public Utilities Commission since the start of 2023. SoCalGas has fought local efforts to move beyond gas.

But in Berkeley, Boichik Bagels in particular may have played a central role in swaying voters.

It’s hard to overstate how much people love Boichik. Winston’s wares have become so popular in the five years since she opened her first of nine stores that the New Jersey-born mechanical engineer now sells Boichik merch, including bagel toys for dogs and babies — which I learned when several members of my family bought them. A New York Times food critic called her bagels “some of the finest New York-style bagels I’ve ever tasted.”

So when Winston said the gas tax would hurt her plans to expand, people listened.

Boichik Bagels employee Armando Carapia removes freshly baked challah from a gas oven at the company’s Berkeley factory on Nov. 14.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

As we watched a few of her 200 employees load challah bread into an oven — it was Thursday, and Shabbat was approaching — Winston walked me through the numbers. Based on her recent gas use, the tax would have cost her $46,000 annually. And the way GG was written, the tax would have gone up 6% each year plus inflation.

“I built this factory to make at least 50,000 bagels a day,” she said. “Forty-six thousand dollars is not going to put us under. But it’s certainly not exactly what I’d like to be doing with money when I could be doing other things.”

“Other things” include coming to Los Angeles. Winston plans to open stores in the next few months in Los Feliz and downtown L.A.’s Bradbury Building. My parents are thrilled; when I told them I was going to tour the Boichik factory, my dad asked if I could bring him back a few bagels. Alas, I didn’t have room in my airplane carry-on.

OK, so what would Winston have done if the ballot measure passed? This is where things get doughy.

She definitely would have looked into replacing her regular gas water heater with an electric version, a relatively easy lift that wouldn’t have affected the bagel-making. Next, she might have explored how expensive it would be to replace her twin kettles — which cost her $20,000 apiece — with electrically powered pots for boiling bagels.

The hardest part — maybe the impossible part — would have been the ovens.

As far as Winston knows, electric ovens capable of making a true New York-style bagel don’t exist. Before starting Boichik, she poked around the kitchens of Manhattan’s best bagel shops to see how they did it. She followed their lead exactly, spending $60,000 apiece on two revolving rack ovens. The way she explains it, each one contains five trays that rotate like a Ferris wheel, bringing the bagels close to a gas-fueled fire that heats them up just right.

“I don’t know of anyone who makes a great bagel in an electric oven,” she said.

Boichik Bagels owner Emily Winston leads a tour of her Berkeley factory on Nov. 14.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

There’s no denying it; Boichik is fabulous. I ordered a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and lox — not traditional, but I had trouble choosing between sweet and savory. I’m no food critic, but suffice to say I’ve spent enough time in New York to know this is the real deal. Every bite was scrumptious. Winston knows what she’s doing.

The unfortunate reality, though, is that avoiding the worst harms of climate change means we’ll need to grapple with difficult trade-offs. Solar farms can destroy wildlife habitat. Electric car batteries need lithium, and producing lithium can require destructive mining. A safe world will involve driving less and eating less meat and dairy.

Much as I love a good bagel, it’s relatively low on my list of concerns.

McGuire, the union organizer who supported Measure GG, feels similarly.

“I can empathize with [Winston],” she said. “But I wouldn’t choose to prioritize, ‘I’m going to have to change the way I do business,’ over, ‘Many people will get sick, many people will be displaced, many people are going to die.’”

No single business is responsible for global warming. Certainly not a bagel company in Berkeley.

Boichik Bagels employee Fernando Carapia stands near a robotic arm transferring a tray of bagels onto a rack at the company’s Berkeley factory on Nov. 14.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

But there are lessons to learn from Measure GG’s failure.

Daniel Tahara, who helped write the measure, said it was hard to convince voters they should “inflict a little bit of pain on some small population for a very large benefit to the wider population.” Even if voting “yes” made sense in theory, in practice people understood the numbers they were hearing from local businesses — and they didn’t have any way to conceptualize a subsidy for a heat pump, or cleaner air from switching to an induction stove.

“I think we had a lot of trouble communicating the benefits to people,” Tahara said.

Business owners, meanwhile, were frustrated by what they saw as an unfair tax that would have punished them for good investments — to the point where Winston made some arguments that don’t quite hold up.

She told me she doesn’t see “an urgent need to move from gas to electric” until California’s power grid is cleaner, since 40% of the state’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels (mostly gas). That argument ignores the 60% of the grid that’s already climate-friendly, making electric appliances already a big improvement over gas. It also leaves out the fact that state law requires utilities to supply 90% clean electricity by 2035 — just a decade away.

Still, Winston raised several valid concerns about electrification beyond the difficulty of making great bagels.

For one thing, electricity rates keep going up, especially for customers of Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric. Also bad: It took more than a year for PG&E to replace Boichik’s electrical panel and add a transformer box — a common problem. And that was just so Boichik would have enough power for its refrigerators. If Winston could find electric ovens, who knows how long she’d be waiting on PG&E?

“We might have to upgrade the power again, and wait another year,” she said.

To avoid a repeat of what happened in Berkeley, state officials — from Newsom on down — must do a far better job at holding utility companies accountable, to ensure affordable electricity and a reliable power grid.

Eliza Wee sits in front of the Boichik Bagel factory and shop in Berkeley on Nov. 14.

(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)

Climate advocates, meanwhile, can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or assume progressive voters will have their backs. They need to reach out to businesses, restaurants especially, as they work on electrification.

As for restaurants? Stop aligning with the gas utility industry to fight anything that smacks of electrification and start working with climate activists to learn how you can cooperate. Electrification is coming, whether you like it or not. Bay Area air quality regulators adopted rules last year that will gradually phase out sales of gas furnaces and water heaters. California will ban the sale of new gas space and water heaters by 2030.

As it happens, Berkeley actually tried something similar, passing the country’s first ban on gas appliances in new buildings in 2019. Dozens of cities across the U.S. followed suit, including Los Angeles. But Berkeley’s policy didn’t last. The California Restaurant Assn. sued and won, arguing that the gas ban was preempted by federal law.

If Berkeley had managed to ban gas in new buildings, Winston said, she would have built her factory elsewhere. But, intriguingly, she also told me she preferred the ban to the gas tax — as long as there was an exemption for food services. Or at least a lengthy phase-in period where businesses like hers could have prepared.

“Everyone needs to know, so they can plan for it,” she said.

Even after the pitched battle over Measure GG, that kind of language is why I think there’s room for dialogue. If climate activists and businesses like Boichik can come together and share technical know-how — if they can stop fighting and start trading policy ideas — we might be able to make progress on moving beyond fossil gas.

It sounds Pollyanna-ish. But when the fate of human civilization is at stake, and all we have to do is figure out a way to make bagels with electric ovens? Or at the very least, not let good bagels get in the way of good policy?

I’m hopeful.

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