Do you ever wonder how different your life would be if that one thing never happened? The “What If” scenarios play through our minds. “What if I had missed that flight? What if I hadn’t gone to that party? What if I had worn a different shirt that night?”
For Brother Adam Diatt (Illinois State, 1997) the “What If” scenario for his life begins and ends at AEPi’s Iota Beta chapter at Illinois State.
“During my freshman year at Illinois State, I joined AEPi and I met this guy in the chapter, Ira Fenton (Illinois State, 1998). He was a year older than me, but I graduated from school quickly.” It’s fair to say that meeting Ira made an impact on Adam’s life. Ira became Adam’s brother-in-law and business partner.
“Ira’s sisters would come down on weekends. It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour ride from Chicago down to Illinois State. So, I met most of his family that year, my freshman year. The following year, Jamie, my now wife, was a freshman at Illinois State, and she ended up getting her degree there as well. So, Ira graduated from State. I graduated from State. Both of our sisters graduated from the State. We were all in school together.”
“Jamie was the AEPi sweetheart…I married our sweetheart! In March, we will have been married 22 years!”
After graduating from Illinois State, Adam began a career in marketing and communications, and Ira began a career in the restaurant industry. “About six and a half years ago, Ira had a chance to buy a Chicago style hot dog stand called the “Mean Wiener” in Highwood, Illinois, which is just north of Highland Park. Ira had been in the business for a long time. He had been selling food to the owners – a company called Once Upon a Bagel – for more than 20 years.”
At the time, Once Upon a Bagel owned several bagel shops and delis throughout the North Shore of Chicago.
“Ira was running the hot dog stand on the side and still working at his full-time job when the owner of Once Upon a Bagel passed away. The owner’s son came back to Chicago to run the business but between COVID and everything else involved, he was ready to let the business go. He went to Ira and asked him if he was interested in buying the business.”
“Ira called his sister – my wife – and said that he had this opportunity to buy the business and he needed a business partner and the only person he would trust was her brother – me!”
Fraternity Brothers. Brothers-In-Law. And now Business Partners.
“Ira is the operations guy. If you tell him you need food for 500 people in an hour, he’ll have it ready for you. He can cook and he can organize people. But the last thing he wanted to do was payroll, insurance, legal bills, etc. He needed somebody. So that’s where I came in. Ira knew that I didn’t have restaurant experience, but my wife told him that I’ve been training for this job my whole life!”
“Here’s a funny thing: before we bought the business, my wife and I would go – or she would send me – to Once Upon a Bagel to pick up bagels and lox and corned beef. After we bought the business, when we first met with the managers, they were all in shock. They all knew me as the guy who came in every Saturday morning. I told them that nothing was going to change, they were just going to see me six days a week now!”
By October of 2022, Adam and Ira were running the business. “We’ve tried not to change much. Some of these stores – like the one in Highland Park – are community pillars so we didn’t want to change much. We painted but we kept all of the recipes for the bagels, breads, sweets and other products the same.”
“We were lucky. When we bought the business, not only did we get the equipment and the recipes, but we got the people. And they had some very, very loyal employees and some very loyal customers. And we inherited both of those.”
Once Upon a Bagel is expanding now into some new communities (an Arlington Heights store is coming soon) in the Chicagoland area but they’re still trying to keep everything the same for the sake of their loyal customers. (And the Mean Wiener is still going strong also!)
The relationships that began in the AEPi house in Normal, Illinois are still the driving force behind the business. “I had a family friend who was at Illinois State. He was a year ahead of me, and he knew I was coming down in the fall. Illinois State at the time had a pretty small Jewish population, and if the guys knew that there was somebody coming to school who was Jewish, there was going to be a connection somehow or another. Most of the Jewish students were from the North Shore of Chicago area. This friend who was already a brother invited me over to the AEPi house and I didn’t leave for three and a half years.”
“Having this business has been a way to kind of reconnect with a whole lot of people. Some of our AEPi brothers get together for lunch here and it’s great to see them and hang out after all of these years. It’s been a nice perk of being in this business!”
#ProudtobeaPi
(For more information on Once Upon a Bagel locations, menus and catering options visit https://onceupononline.com. We certainly encourage all of our Chicagoland brothers to stop in and pay both Adam and Ira a visit and tell them that AEPi sent you!)
