Sam Lender, 84; Put Bagels in America’s Freezer Section
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Sam Lender, who died Sunday at age 84, was the eldest of the three Lender brothers, the family that used the freezer to transform the bagel from a little-known nosh to a staple breakfast item consumed nationwide. The brothers liked to call it “the bagelization of America.”
Each of the brothers specialized in some aspect of the business: Murray was the marketing guru who sold skeptics on frozen “roundies” as they called the 2-ouncers; Marvin handled administration; Sam was responsible for developing automatic bagel machinery.
The Lender story goes back to Lublin, Poland, historically the heart of bagel country, where Sam Lender was born and his father, Harry Lender, was a baker. Harry immigrated to America in the 1920s and found work as a bagel baker. By 1929, Harry had saved up enough money – $600 – to buy his own small bakery, in New Haven, Conn., where there were no other bagel bakers. He called it the “New York Bagel Bakery.”
Harry Lender brought his family to New Haven, and the whole family would work together baking. Harry mixed the dough and it fell to Sam to shape the bagels. Other family members boiled, baked, strung the bagels, and delivered them. Most of the work was concentrated on Saturdays, because bagels were Sunday morning food, served with lox and cream cheese.
By 1954, the business had expanded, and Harry installed a walk-in freezer. Freezing started as a way of preserving freshness on nights when the bakery was closed, then soon it made it possible for the business to branch out into supplying Catskill resort hotels. Preslicing made them even more popular. In 1956, a revolving-tray oven was installed and new flavors such as cinnamon and onion were added. By the time Harry retired, in 1960, sales to supermarkets were taking off.
It was during the 1960s that the renamed Lender’s began bagelizing all of America. It began selling prepackaged frozen bagels directly to consumers through supermarkets, rather than just using the freezing process for its own convenience.
Critical to the undertaking was Sam’s bagel-molding machine, which replaced humans who normally required months of training to get the torus shape just right. The things sold like, well, hotcakes.
“By 1976, we had bagelized California,” Murray Lender wrote in “Frozen Food Digest.” Lender’s moved its primary production to a plant near Buffalo – at the time the largest bagel bakery in the world – and Sam retired.
Thus, he was not in the business when the company commissioned the Connecticut Ballet to perform “The Dance of the Bagels,” a balletic history of Lender’s, in 1982.
He also missed out on Lender’s involvement in geopolitical summitry: when the company delivered 5,000 bagels shaped as the heads of world leaders to the World Economic Summit in Williamsburg, Va. Margaret Thatcher’s was said to be particularly intricate.
The brothers sold the business to Kraft in 1984; later it was sold to Kelloggs and then to Aurora, a food company that specializes in “troubled” brands. Nevertheless, Lender’s bagels had nearly $100 million in sales in 2003.
Sam Lender retired to Boca Raton, where he was involved with the local synagogue and regularly attended meetings of the Palm Beach County Commission and the West Boca Raton Community Council.
There, according to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, he spoke out “as a retiree concerned about street lights, landfills, and other growth woes affecting western Boca Raton.”