The Charlottesville 29

Charlottesville’s favorite restaurant has reached a milestone. Bodo’s Bagels’ current owners have now owned it longer than the founder did. What makes this remarkable is not just longevity, but consistency. Even with ownership that has outlasted its founder’s, Bodo’s remains the happy experience it has always been.

That takes vision — and execution.

Founder Brian Fox’s vision was somewhere everyone would feel love. “Right from the start, people came in on foot, came in pushing shopping carts, and came in Rolls Royces,” Fox once said. “And everybody got in line, and everybody smiled at each other, and it felt wonderful.” While day one was 1988, Fox’s words could just as easily describe today.

Fox also envisioned a place that feels like Charlottesville. When Bodo’s opened, Fox was still a newcomer to Charlottesville, having fallen for the city while searching for a place to relocate his family from Vermont. From his first visit, he found Charlottesville to be a wonderful place, full of warm and hospitable people — and he wanted his place to reflect that. Bodo’s warmth comes from Charlottesville, and Charlottesville’s, in turn, from Bodo’s.

That synergy also drives the execution of Fox’s vision. For the past two decades, credit belongs to the current owners and staff. Longtime employees before buying the business in 2006, John Kokola and Scott Smith understood the pillars that sustained Fox’s vision and have never let them erode. Any changes have come quietly and carefully: a new item, an improved ingredient source. And so, under their care, Bodo’s remains as congruous with Charlottesville as Fox intended. “Charlottesville is home to great people, who both responded to my efforts and seeded my enterprise with wonderful employees, without whom I wouldn’t have been able to carry it off,” Fox said this week, reflecting on Bodo’s legacy.

Scott Smith and John Kokola

For that, no one is more grateful than Fox. When he sold Bodo’s, Fox declined investors’ overtures because he thought his staff had the best chance to sustain what he built. For two decades, that decision has paid off for him, for Charlottesville, and for the owners themselves. “What a blessing it’s been to have so much continuity in Bodo’s, where the hands-on of John and Scott have done nothing but improve what I left behind,” said Fox. “I am more than grateful, not just for the continuity, but for the fact that the enterprise now benefits those friends that I love like brothers, and their families as well.”

Now 80, Fox still drops in on occasion to savor what he calls the good vibes among public and staff, the magical machine of people and food humming along. “What a privilege to be a witness,” Fox said. “How lucky I am to be here and now. Gratitude.”

Lucky indeed. Almost forty years after its founding, and nearly twenty after its sale, Bodo’s is the same as it ever was. Just the way Charlottesville likes it.

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For a full history of Bodo’s, visit here.