Jeff Zients, who will be replacing Ron Klain as chief of staff in Joe Biden’s White House, is a man of many hats. He has led the president’s Covid task force, served as a top economic adviser and been on the board of prominent, profitable multinationals.
And for many in Washington DC, he is also known as the co-founder of a wildly popular and much beloved chain of “Jew-ish” bagel shops favoured by local officer workers and President Joe Biden alike.
The restaurant promises to deliver bagels that are a cross between a “classic New York style bagel” and the “sweeter, Montreal-style bagels from our friends up north”.
The chain, “Call Your Mother”, was founded in 2018, when Mr Zients was working in the private sector as a member of Facebook’s board of advisors and the CEO of Wall Street investment firm Cranemere.
One of the chain’s co-founders, Andrew Dana, told the BBC that the successful bagel business was born over an equally delicious meal – pizzas – after he was introduced to Mr Zients by his father, who had been a summer camp companion of his in New Hampshire in the 1960s.
At the time of the meeting, Mr Dana recalled, he was unaware of Mr Zients experiences as top economic advisor under the Barack Obama administration.
“My dad told me he was interested in opening a restaurant. That was all the background I got. I was expecting to go sit with some 24-year-old,” he said.
“We had lunch, hit it off and decided to do something together. Then I went home, Googled him and saw his Wikipedia page. I was like ‘whoa nelly!'”
The meeting ended with the unlikely pair hitting it off.
“Over that lunch we decided to do something together and come up with a fun concept,” Mr Dana said. “I went back to the drawing pad with my wife and partner Daniela, and we drew up what would become Call Your Mother – and he was stoked about it.”
Far from being a quiet, behind-the-scenes investor, Mr Dana said that Mr Zients was actively involved in the creation of the first restaurant, including a long series of taste tests.
“Every weekend for about nine months before we opened, Dani and I would take bagels over to his house and do live taste tests to see how the bagel recipes were coming along,” he said.
Backed by Mr Zients, Call Your Mother became a runaway success. Even as other Washington DC restaurants suffered during the pandemic, the chain flourished, and now boasts seven locations, with another on the way.
In January 2021, Call Your Mother also became the first restaurant in which Joe Biden dined out in Washington as president.
The president’s visit, however, came after Mr Zients had divested from the restaurant and taken a role in the Biden administration as Counselor to the President and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.
On Friday, Mr Biden formally announced that Mr Zients would be taking over in early February as his chief of staff, managing his schedule and driving his policy agenda.
Mr Dana and Mr Zients, however, have remained friends. Mr Dana said that he occasionally still takes bagels over to his home.
His favourite bagel? “A sesame bagel, scooped hard and double-toasted,” Mr Dana said.
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20 January
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