
A day in the life of Lloyd Squires, Vermont's 'best' bagel maker - seamusabshere
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2018/11/19/lloyd-squires-myers-bagels-burlington/1977013002/
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otras
I love portraits like this, as the lifestyle is so far from anything I
experience in my day to day.

Along these lines, although this seems very tame in comparison, I'm reminded
of the "A Day in the Life" chapter from Anthony Bourdain's _Kitchen
Confidential_ (which I highly recommend):

" _Thanks to my Bigfoot training I wake up automatically at five minutes
before six. It 's still dark, and I lie in bed in the pitch-black for a while,
smoking, the day's specials and prep lists already coming together in my head.
It's Friday, so the weekend orders will be coming in: twenty-five cases of
mesclun, eighteen cases of GPOD 70-count potatoes, four whole forequarters of
lamb, two cases of beef tenderloins, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of meat,
bones, produce, seafood, dry goods and dairy. I know what's coming, and the
general order in which it will probably arrive, so I'm thinking triage
-sorting out in my head what gets done first, and by whom, and what gets left
until later._"

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cosmon0t
Awesome seeing Vermont on the front page of HN. I can attest these bagels are
amazing, I used to get them throughout college.

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pivo
I’ll be in Burlington for thanksgiving, can’t wait to try them!

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anon2775
I heard about a mayor from there at one time, nobody's ever heard of him
because they were too busy showing empty podiums. ;)

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overcast
He then worked 15-hour days, seven days a week for seven years.

"I've never worked less than 65 hours a week," he says.

He's barely gotten outside of Vermont and Montreal because of the schedule.
Now, fortunately, he gets a day off on the weekend. He's recently been to both
Connecticut and Boston.

NOOOOPE.

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meesterdude
But look where he was coming from: he was homeless before. He has purpose now,
and is engaged. Yes, it's unbalanced - and i would surely burn out from it.
But he seems happy, and grateful for what he has. Satisfaction in life comes
in many shapes and sizes.

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skymer
He makes/sells on average 250 to 300 dozen bagels per day. The bagels sell for
$10 a dozen, so that's over $2500 revenue on the bagels alone. He's open 6
days a week, so that's $15,000 per week, or $780,000 per year.

His bakery is also a diner/deli, and I'm going to make the assumption that the
revenue from that covers all his non-bagel costs. The ingredients in a bagel
cost less than 10 cents each, or about 10% of the selling price. So he could
net about $700,000 per year.

Not a bad gig, if he could cut back the hours a bit.

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jcloud_dev
Still, 15 hours of manual labor a day. I worked in a bakery and this is a hard
sell for anyone. Assembly line work in a factory is much easier occupation (I
did that too).

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skymer
He arrived at work at 2:11am, and he left at 10:31am. So that's a typical 8
hour work day. He then set off on a long road trip to deliver bagels, but he
could easily get somebody else to do that -- he just likes the drive.

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rtomanek
> He rarely gets four hours of sleep.

Right.

I genuinely don't get where this glorification of no/ little sleep is coming
from.

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rustcharm
He should close Saturday, and get a hechsher. He’d get more business and some
rest.

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dmckeon
> Saturday, and there will be twice as many customers

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rustcharm
Yes, but being open Saturday, he won't have Jewish customers, who are in the
prime demographic group for bagels.

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jkaplowitz
He won't have the Orthodox Shabbat-observing hechsher-seeking Jews. Most
American Jews, and I suspect most Vermont Jews, are quite open to buying a
bagel on Saturdays, or from a bagel shop that isn't strictly kosher.

Source: I am such an American Jew, though not from Vermont.

Doubly so for his non-Jewish customers.

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keeganjw
The Montreal spice bagels here are very good! It's the perfect weekend morning
spot located in an old warehouse that has a vintage furniture store on one
side and a used record/book store on the other. After I'm finished with my
bagel and coffee, I love taking time to explore the other shops. They always
have weird and interesting stuff.

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coldcode
When I think I am working hard, I watch folks like this, and I know I have it
easy.

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WoodenChair
I've been to this bagel shop multiple times and I can attest that it's good.
It's in a pretty rundown building with an unpaved parking lot. It just goes to
show that quality is not always about aesthetics.

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overcast
But the bagels are aesthetically pleasing.

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donretag
They look really skinny compared to a New York bagel.

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mhb
They are. It's a different thing, but they're great.

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kylek
The gifs in here are a treasure trove for r/oddlysatisfying

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LittlePeter
How can he sustain this 5 hour sleep schedule?

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logfromblammo
He can't, unless he has a beneficial genetic mutation that makes his sleep
super effective.

He needs to hire a delivery driver, record the hockey games on a DVR to watch
the next day, and buy blackout curtains for his bedroom, so he can go to sleep
by 5 PM.

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rwc
ah, the arrogance of HN hard at work. Prescribing the perfect solution to a
problem he didn’t even know he had.

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logfromblammo
Fine. He should get a sleep study done, so a specialist doctor can describe
the damage he is doing to himself, scare him a little, and come up with a
treatment plan from there. If you only sleep for 4 or 5 hours a night, you are
killing yourself.

Everybody who does odd-hours work _should_ have a sleep specialist doctor, and
this guy is one of the few who need one, that can actually afford one. Sleep
is important. It is not wasted time; it is biologically necessary.

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lexpar
The Montreal bagel is no joke.

