On Saturday, April 25 around 10 a.m. a fire flared at The Daly Bagel, 130 Chicago Ave. in Oak Park. Though the flames were limited to inside an oven and were quickly extinguished, damage will take some time to set to rights.
The flames appear to have been kindled by dough debris. As customers calmly evacuated the storefront, employees put out the blaze with a hand-held extinguisher.
“The fire department was not required to put out the fire,” co-owner Adrienne Guldin said. “But they did come to check everything, but it wasn’t bad enough that it required fire hoses.”
Amanda Daly, co-owner and namesake, lives just a few blocks away. She arrived on scene just after fire trucks arrived.
“I think we had both Oak Park and Forest Park here,” Daly said. “They were amazing. They covered all our equipment, so that anything that they did would not ruin other things. That’s the stuff that actually really gets me emotional.”
After the firefighters evaluated to make sure the fire had not spread beyond the oven, upstairs apartment residents were allowed to return to their home, but the bagel kitchen will take some work to get back to business.
“We do have some damage,” Guldin said. “We don’t know the extent of the damage to the oven quite yet. We also have some drywall on the outside of the oven that needs to be replaced. Obviously, there’s a lot of cleanup, between smoke and the chemicals from the fire extinguisher.”
The owners hope to start baking again in 1 to 2 weeks.
In better news, the shop participated in the first Chicago Bagel Fest hosted in March by Chicago20Something. Their seasonal lemon & lavender bagel won the prize for flavor.
As they regroup, Daly and Guldin want to thank their employees for quick action and commitment to helping get the business back up and running. And they have a message for customers too.
“Thank you all for your patience,” Guldin said. “We will be back, I promise. And I want to say thank you to everyone who has checked in with us and sent us kind messages. It’s been a lot of people, and it’s been really, really gratifying.”
It is too early to know if the shop will need to set up a GoFundMe-type donation request to pay expenses that aren’t covered by insurance, but in the meantime the owners ask that customers buy gift cards from the website for future bagel purchases. Doing so, Guldin said, would be “wonderful show of support and a financial boost.”