Madison Math: Bagels and Taxpayers
Anderson regularly posts videos about the bagel business he started in 2023 and broke down the weekend’s sales for the shop’s 25,000 followers: on Friday, they sold about 1,000 bagels. On Saturday and Sunday, they sold about 1,500 bagels each day.
“In 2023, when I started … the demand was just not what it is,” he said. A brick-and-mortar at that time “would have been a huge risk.”
Arguably, Barrett’s Bagels is one of the city’s most anticipated new retail openings. Part of that is the approach Anderson, who worked at Madison Sourdough and Batch Bakehouse, takes with the bagels.
Another is how, through his social media presence, Anderson has been upfront and revealing about the ups and downs of business ownership, taking followers along for the journey.
For example, he notes that food business margins are thin, but customers often don’t see the realities of financing a food business. “It gives people a way better understanding of why things are priced the way they are.”
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After eight years of development and more than $8 million spent by the city of Madison, Wisconsin, Maurer’s Urban Market will open in the Bay Creek neighborhood later this month. Local officials have pitched the store as a measure to prevent a “food desert” in that part of town.
The truth: Maurer’s is right across the street from another grocery store. And within a mile of three others. How this glut came to be is a good illustration of why the government is not cut out for the grocery business.
In 2018, Madison officials feared that a local Pick ’n Save, a supermarket owned by Kroger, was going to close. A municipally owned property was being redeveloped nearby, so the city required all development proposals to include space for a grocery store. It eventually settled on a proposal from a private developer to build an apartment complex with a grocery store on the first floor.
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Police monitor oversight board wants $40,000 to sue the City of Madison.
More.
2009 (!) University of Wisconsin-Madison Placement Office study of “reform vs traditional math” outcomes came to mind when reading Corrinne Hess’s 7 July 2026 article: “Fewer than half of Wisconsin students are proficient at math“.
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