Spread Bagelry founder’s new shop, Ringo, specializes in a different kind of round: Baked doughnuts

Fourteen years ago, Larry Rosenblum introduced Montreal-style bagels to Center City Philadelphia with Spread Bagelry on 20th Street near Rittenhouse Square. Sixteen locations and an infusion of private equity later, Rosenblum has come around again with … something round.

This time, it’s a spin on doughnuts. Unlike the usual fried ones, Ringo Coffee & Donuts, which opened five weeks ago at 20th and Federal Streets in the city’s Point Breeze section, bakes pancake doughnuts in an electric device similar to a waffle iron.

The doughnuts get sweet or savory toppers, like Blueberry Lemon Tango, Mama’s Apple Pie, Chocolate Fudged Up, Jalapeño Cheddar Fondue, and Southern Turkey Sausage Gravy.

The G’Ringo breakfast sandwich, built on two doughnuts, contains eggs, cheese, and choice of bacon, turkey bacon, or turkey sausage. It’s grilled on a panini press, then covered in brown butter maple syrup.

A pizza variation, on a savory doughnut whose batter includes cheese and Italian seasonings, is called a Rizzo. Go-Gos are doughnuts sliced in halves and schmeared with cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly.

The honey cornbread doughnut is gluten-free, and the whole-grain version is vegan. Coffee drinks — as the shop opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 2 p.m. daily — are made with Rival Bros beans.

There’s a learning curve for customers, Rosenblum said. “They think they’re going to walk into a bakery and there will be doughnuts in a bakery case.” But the doughnuts sit, unadorned, on wire racks and are topped to order. They’re $2.75 each, or $28 a dozen. The most common order is two doughnuts with two toppers for $10.

Rosenblum, 64, said he had no firm plans last August when he leased the space, a former OCF Coffeehouse across from the Engine 24 firehouse and new brunch spot Hannah K’s. Initially, after a monthlong trip to Brazil with his wife and business partner, Gigi Arnuti, to visit her family, he decided to slap on a fresh coat of paint and run it as a coffeehouse called Point Breeze Coffee Company.

“Then I stood here one night and I said, ‘I don’t want to do that. My brain just doesn’t work that way.’ I’m looking out the window [at the firehouse] and I think, ‘firemen,’ ‘policemen,’ and then ‘doughnuts,‘” Rosenblum said. “And I’m like, ‘I’m on 20th Street.’ I did pretty well on 20th Street with golden rings of dough before. I could stay in the vernacular with golden rings.”

Rings led to the name Ringo, his favorite Beatle. You might say that the cymbals hanging on the wall are symbolic.

There’s also a shelf of men’s hats with a small sign noting that they’re from Leo’s, a haberdashery at Germantown and Lehigh Avenues in North Philadelphia, founded by Rosenblum’s uncle Leo, a Holocaust survivor who died in 2018. (His son, David, now runs Leo’s.)

Rosenblum sells the hats for whatever a customer wants to pay, and he donates the proceeds to the Philadelphia Fire Department Foundation.

Rosenblum said Spread’s success can partly be attributed to “the theatrical aspect to the way that the bagels are baked — the wood-fired oven, being handmade right in front of the customer, where they could look into the oven and see them pulled out in small batches and smell them all day.”

That was part of the inspiration at Ringo, he said, because “the doughnuts are artisanal in that sense.”