Everyone has those late-night cravings and dorm life makes getting snacks a struggle. There are just some nights where you really don’t want to leave the comfort of your room. Boston University students Chinda Eleonu (QST ’21) and Ilana Basman (QST ’21) saw this problem and turned to bagels as the solution.
Their bagel-delivery service, Toasty Boys, has you covered. They offer different bagels and spreads delivered right to BU’s West Campus residences from 9 PM to 1 AM on Thursdays.
I spoke with one of Toasty Boy’s founders, Chinda Eleonu, about how the idea started and where it’s headed.
Q. What is Toasty Boys for those who don’t know, how does it work, and who can use it?
A. Toasty Boys is, at its core, a student-run bagel delivery service currently only operating within West Campus. In the past, we used methods such as Snapchat and order forms to take orders, but now customers can download our easy-to-use app on the iOS app store to browse and place orders for our delicious toasty bagels. Currently, we are on a hiatus as we are making some changes to the company in order to be BU compliant. While we only deliver to West campus dormitories such as Stuvi 1 and 2, Sleeper, Rich, Claflin, and 1019, we hope to have pop-ups in various other residences like Warren and Myles Standish once we return.
Q. How did Toasty Boys start?
A. I was in my friend’s room one day when I realized I was super hungry, and I didn’t eat a lot that day due to the dining hall being absolutely atrocious. As one does, I browsed Amazon for appliances to make food, and I came across a toaster. When I asked my friend if I should buy it or not, she replied, “Yeah, you should! You should sell stuff out of it and call yourself the Toaster Boy.” That got me thinking. Then I went to my friends and chatted about the idea with them, and they helped me with a bunch of the initial ideas, branding, and image of Toasty Boys, but ultimately, it was the help of the now COO and CO-Founder of Toasty Boys Ilana Basman, that helped Toasty Boys get off the ground from an idea to a reality.
Q. Why bagels?
A. I come from Sharon, Massachusetts, which at the time of my early youth, had the second highest concentration of Jewish people right after Israel. As a result, I had many a bagel growing up, so I became very fond of them. I guess that interest stayed with me at BU. Also, for most other meals you’ll eat while in college, they’ll all be able to be “shareable”. “Oh lemme get a slice of this or a piece of that.” Bagels aren’t nearly as shareable, so everyone can get their own.
Q. What are the most popular bagel flavors? Do you struggle to meet the demand for these?
A. Usually, our sweet bagels are our most popular: Cinnamon Glazed, Chocolate Chip, and the occasional French Toast. But you also can’t go wrong with classics such as Plain and Everything. We’re pretty good with estimating how many to purchase each week because we analyze each of the previous week’s sales.
Q. You recently made an app, has this changed how the business runs?
A. While we’ve only run with the app once, the change is already evident. For the customers, it makes ordering toasty boys significantly easier, with the average order placement time running under a minute. On our side, each person working in-house on a Thursday has a screen with bagels on it depending on their position, and once a bagel is done at the “toasting” station, it’ll move on to the spreading station and so on.
Q. What do you hope to accomplish with Toasty Boys in the future? Where do you see it going?
A. What’s amazing about Toasty Boys is that we’ve never placed any kind of ceiling on it. While it could be an amazing business that ends as soon as we graduate, there’s nothing to say we couldn’t have successors to run it or relaunch it in a couple of years post-grad if the opportunity arises. Currently, though, our main goal is to restructure the business model to be BU-compliant, so that we can start delivering our delicious Toasty Boys bagels as soon as possible.
Download the Toasty Boys app here, or follow them on Instagram to browse the flavor choices and stay up to date with the newest bagel news!
All photos from Chinda Elenou.
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