Jensen Kugler
Contributing Writer
Over the summer, local businesses Boo Bears Brew and Wootown Bagels opened a joint drive-through location on East Bowman Street. This new location is only a 10-minute walk from campus.
Boo Bears Brew is a local coffee shop first established by Seth Feikert in 2018. Boo Bears serves several kinds of coffee, as well as other drinks like hot chocolate, lemonade and tea. Wootown Bagels opened for business a few years earlier, in the spring of 2015. They roll, boil and bake fresh bagels every day. Students can find Wootown Bagels in Old Main and MacLeod’s C-store. From January 21, 2022 to the end of the 2023-24 academic year, Boo Bears ran the coffee shop in Kauke Hall, where Old Main Café is now.
The change from leasing the space in the basement of Kauke to Boo Bears to reopening as a campus dining location was not popular with students, as evidenced by student quotes in a Voice article from September last year. For many upperclassmen who remember having Boo Bears on campus, this sentiment persists.
“It’s not a communal or collaborative or social space anymore … Boo Bears wasn’t just about the bagels, it was about the community,” said Emma Anderson ’26.
While Feikert also misses The College of Wooster campus community, he has used that experience to develop and expand Boo Bears. He hopes that students will drop by the new location and continue to build relationships with local businesses, even as they may change or pivot direction.
“I took a lot of the stuff that I learned from the College location and copy-and-pasted it in here,” said Feikert, referring to the new location. “We were able to produce what we did in that tiny little rectangle where we were tripping on top of each other. We had very limited space, and now we have this space.”
Boo Bears and Wootown Bagels can both be found in downtown Wooster as well, at the co-op grocery store Local Roots. The two locations offer the same fall drink menu but provide a different kind of experience — namely in food. The main difference between their offerings is that the shop on East Bowman Street has bagel breakfast sandwiches.
“The Local Roots [location] is a part of the market co-op, so we don’t have the ability to do foods there,” Feikert explained. “If you want food, I would recommend coming [to the Bowman Street location]. If you want coffee and a place to sit, I would go to the other location.”
When asked what sets Boo Bears apart, Feikert stressed that his business has always focused heavily on getting goods from local suppliers. Boo Bears gets its oat milk, cups and silverware from local distributors. Their compostable cups and silverware are also a notable initiative.
The site’s drive-through aspect makes it a unique business in the area, particularly as a small business. The building previously served as a drive-through bank, and renovation of the site involved the removal of a bank vault.
“The process for setting up the new location was very educational! We learned a lot, but Wooster is filled with great contractors and people in government that wanted to see a local business like Wootown come to life,” said ‘Bagel Boss’ James Carey, founder and owner of Wootown Bagels. “We hope the students know they can get the freshest bagels and their favorite coffee down at the Bowman location.”
Wootown Bagels offers the same bagel flavors year-round. The East Bowman Street location serves all of the bagels that students can find on campus, as well as salt bagels. Boo Bears has several seasonal menus, each highlighting specialty syrups like pumpkin spice and apple spice. The fall menu is active from now until December 1, when Boo Bears will begin offering their winter menu. Should College of Wooster students drop by with their student IDs, they can enjoy a 10% discount at the Wootown/Boo Bears drive-through and the Local Roots location. Boo Bears Wootown is open from 6:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. on the weekends.
