JRI Hospitality is thrilled to announce the latest collaboration with renowned, Arizona-grown brand Barrio Bread. Chompie’s and Barrio Bread teamed up for a unique collaboration that brought artisan, Sonoran-style bagels to the growing locally-sourced food market.
Neal Borenstein, the head of Chompie’s expansive bread and bakery department partnered with Don Guerra, the mastermind behind Barrio Bread, to bring scratch-made artisan bagels to life through clean ingredients, attention to detail, and lots of love.
Don Guerra has been a well-known figure in the Gilbert and Tucson communities with his daily artisan bread selling out time after time. In addition to being a 2022 James Beard Award winner, he has the desire to support local businesses by using only local ingredients. Along the way, he realized that customers crave a short ingredient list and were asking more questions about ingredient sourcing. He believes in developing products with simplicity and intention, which led to this collaboration with Borenstein and Chompie’s.
“The Tucson community loves to support local business and agriculture. That has been a big ‘wow factor’ for the community. People are very excited about this product and the collaboration. We put it out the night before, and people show up and sell us out”, says Guerra.
The first bagels rolled out this past summer starting with 15 dozen per week, and the demand quickly increased to 80 dozen per week. Borenstein and Guerra anticipate that as companies move into high season, the demand will be even higher as customer feedback has been outstanding.
There are currently three flavors available, Sonoran Plain, Sonoran Sesame, and Sonoran Everything which are currently being sold at Barrio Bread and some pop-ups in Tucson. As the program continues to gain steam, Borenstein hopes the bagels will appear in Chompie’s locations as well very soon.
We are extremely proud of this partnership and are excited to see how this program will grow in the coming years.
Visit Don Guerra’s website to learn more about Barrio Bread, or to place a pre-order: barriobread.com. To learn more about Chompie’s, visit chompies.com.