After 30 years, Rounds Bakery will close its doors on July 17. But it’s only the retail operation that’s shutting down.
The revised Rounds will be focusing on providing fresh-packed food through its commercial bakery. Its products will still be available in local stores, though a list of which ones—asked for by many of the bakery’s followers on social media—has yet to be provided.
In a statement made on its social media platforms, Rounds co-owner Anton Novak said, “COVID-19 has cleared the table. After thirty years of lovingly cultivating this bakery, we are entering our next phase— fresh packed food in packages you can trust. The bagels you love from Rounds Bakery will still be available all over town, but in a different, more innovative form.”
The statement continues, “We must socially distance, and our retail model does not support that right now. We take this virus seriously and public health is paramount. We are not contracting—we are expanding.”
The bakery is not laying off employees. Those who worked in its retail operations will be absorbed into the commercial operation.
Many know Rounds Bakery for its signature combination of a donut and croissant. Some people call it a “cronut”—but not the folks at Rounds. It made the local news a few years ago when the bakery received a cease-and-desist order from the legal team representing Dominique Ansel of New York’s Dominique Ansel Bakery, which holds a federal trademark on the term “cronut.”
The owners of Rounds, who said they’d never used the term, sent a series of mocking tweets to Ansel using the hashtag #notacronut, including this one: “@DominiqueAnsel To say sorry, I drew you a picture with my Crayolas. Damn, I mean my wax drawing sticks #NotACronut.”
